Backup Storage Protection (Anti-Ransomware) | Vinchin V6.5

As ransomware continually “updates” along with the development of modern data centers, having ordinary backups only is not enough for satisfying anti-ransomware results. It is reported that there’re ransomware victims that had tried to use backups for system recovery, but later failed because they found out even the backup data was also encrypted. We should have this mindset: backup data is not always as safe as we think if it lacks protection. In order to keep your backup data really safe, you can leverage the backup storage protection technique provided by Vinchin Backup & Recovery.

What is Backup Storage Protection?

Based on real-time IO monitoring, the technique performs to secure backup data saved in Vinchin backup storages (exclusive block devices) by directly denying backup data modification requested by unauthorized applications. This can effectively prevent your critical backup data from unexpected losses.

How it works

•The working principle of Vinchin Storage Protection are the following:

•Only Vinchin applications can write data into the backup storage

•Only Vinchin applications can modify the existing backup data.

•Vinchin application binaries are also protected.

• Anti-ransomware (and other malware)

•Prevent backup data from malicious deletion

Vinchin Backup & Recovery applies a daemon process to monitor the IO requests from all applications within Vinchin backup infrastructure, including Vinchin backup server and Vinchin backup node.

Only the IO requests from Vinchin applications are allowed to write and modify the backup data inside Vinchin backup storage, and requests from other applications will be all blocked.

In order to prevent a malware being disguised as a Vinchin application, the daemon process will also protect Vinchin application binaries, for example, the backup service application, backup copy and backup archive applications. Therefore, no other software or application can modify your critical backups in Vinchin backup storages.

Once storage protection is enabled, even the root user of Vinchin backup server cannot delete the backup data from the command-line interface, so it can also prevent the backup data from accidental and malicious deletion.

How to enable Backup Storage Protection?

Since backup storage protection is off in default in Vinchin Backup & Recovery, you need to manually enable the feature in the management console.

Open the console, go to System > System Settings > Security Settings.

Here, you can go to Storage Security section to enable the feature, and click OK to save the change. 

Once done, you can make sure the backups stored in attached storage on Vinchin backup server are all well-protected away from ransomware.