If you took a doubletake when you first learned of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), you’re not alone. It sounds like a joke on the surface—crooks using a software licensing model as if it’s a legitimate business.
But as soon as you digest the reality, the scope and scale of the threat begin to sink in. Ransomware attacks are effective enough to have launched a whole crop of cybercrime entrepreneurs. That’s a stunning reality. And for your clients, it’s a scary one.
DRaaS vs. Traditional Backup
The best defense against ransomware is Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS). In simple terms, it’s the best defense because it’s better than your clients are at backing up the data they need.
They don’t do it thoroughly enough, frequently enough or comprehensively enough. Even the automated backup routines that were sufficient when DRaaS was primarily a hedge against natural disaster outages are insufficient for today’s round-the-clock, omnipresent threats.
Choosing A DRaaS Provider For Your MSP Business
Like all things tech, not all DRaaS solutions are equal. And like all things security, that inequality can make all the difference between mounting a successful defense or suffering an epic failure. Here are some tips to help arm your clients with a provider that’s up to the task:
- Strong channel support - The provider you trust with your customers should value you as a customer, as well. Pick a supplier partner with a well-established commitment to channel partners. Strong MSP support is essential. Independent agents and MSPs are lightyears apart in terms of sophistication and support needs, so pick a provider that understands your business.
- Proven performance - There are two considerations here. First, you want a solution you know you can count on. Second, your clients can check up on the solution you offer with a simple Google search. Make sure the solution you offer has been proven over time and has solid reviews.
- Easy to deploy and operate - One of the biggest obstacles to achieving cyber resilience is disruption. Your clients want to run their businesses, not spend their days bogged down in cybersecurity. The solution you choose should be easy for you or your clients to operate.
- Continuous synchronization - Restoring to the previous day won’t cut it anymore—business moves too fast to lose even a day. Look for a solution that constantly syncs, ensuring that restorations return companies or users where they were when the disruption occurred.
- Fully automated - When it comes to security software operations, the key to achieving foolproof user compliance is to take the user out of the equation. The solution you deploy should be hidden and unobtrusive.
- Endpoint backup and recovery - Remote work isn’t going anywhere soon. If a provider can’t deliver, find one that does.
- Fast restoration - The whole point of cyber resilience is to keep operations running even when there’s a successful attack. Advanced DRaaS solutions provide restoration time objectives in minutes and recovery point objectives in seconds.
- Encryption - Hackers are successfully attacking unencrypted backup data. Make sure the solution you give your client has end-to-end encryption built into its core operation.
One last piece of advice: DRaaS is vital but just one layer in a comprehensive cyber resilience plan. Look for a provider that can deliver all the components your clients need to achieve reliable resilience. It will simplify life for you and your clients, and you’ll have a single source of accountability for all things security.