Hitachi Vantara: How to Secure Data in Age of AI Ransomware

The cyber threat landscape is one of the worst it has been in years. DDoS attacks surging more than 100% have put enterprises at fear that they can be taken offline.

Yet the fears of today have not abated the fears of yesterday. Ransomware is still on a rampage - with nearly of three quarters businesses worldwide being affected, up from 55% five years ago.

In North America, this manifests itself most in the healthcare industry, followed by manufacturing, then the government facilities industry. Healthcare has been a similar target in the UK, with one particularly pernicious attack putting down a hospital's systems for handling blood. 

But why now is ransomware having a resurgence? To find out more, we spoke with Chris Gee, Technical Experts Manager, EMEA, Hitachi Vantara about AI augmenting the ransomware resurgence the world is now witnessing.

A goldmine of data

The data we generate, collect, and consume is projected to surge from approximately 50 zettabytes in 2020, to an astonishing 175 zettabytes by 2025.

At the same time, a large proportion of enterprise data is unstructured, making it far harder to secure, due to its volume, variety, and inherent lack of organisation.

This makes it more easily accessible to attackers, and with criminals now employing smart AI capabilities to optimise ransomware, the threat to organisations is substantial.

"AI has taken ransomware mainstream and all businesses, from startups to scale ups and multinationals, are now vulnerable. In fact, the use of AI tools in phishing and automation attacks led to a twofold increase in ransomware attacks between July 2022 and August 2023," Chris says.

"Worse still, experts predict that by 2031, when ransomware is expected to strike every two seconds, the damage it does will reach an estimated US$265bn."

In order to stand up to the increasingly powerful tools being used by cybercriminals, organisations must modernise their data platforms to keep pace, harnessing the power of AI to monitor their systems and flag anomalies using automation.

While AI will undoubtedly contribute to data growth, employing it in this way means it will also play a crucial role in data protection.

Maintaining a robust and secure data infrastructure involves a layered defence system – one that's carefully designed to address both technical and strategic considerations.

"Automated threat detection and response uses AI-powered systems to analyse vast amounts of data to identify anomalies and suspicious activities in real-time, enabling faster and more effective threat detection and response," Chris explains.

"Meanwhile, data anonymisation and privacy protection involves employing AI to anonymise sensitive data while preserving its utility for analytics, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations. Lastly, predictive security analytics is about AI algorithms learning from past security incidents and historical data to predict potential threats and vulnerabilities, enabling proactive security measures."

Keeping the cloud secure

In addition to harnessing the power of AI for these various defence strategies, organisations must also adequately protect their data, whether it's in the data centre, in the cloud or at the edge.

As Chris states, "You also want to be sure critical production and backup data is always available and protected." Hybrid cloud solutions can play a crucial role in this regard.

"Hybrid clouds are network infrastructure configurations that combine at least one linkage between public and private cloud networks. These configurations are managed using software-defined networking technologies that meld these disparate networks under a single pane of glass control.

"In this way, they can extend the capabilities offered in the data centre to remote offices, branch offices, and user devices like laptops and mobile phones. The data that is created outside of enterprise data centres gets transported to infrastructure that delivers strong data protection, reliability, and compliance."

Ransomware remains one of the most pervasive cybersecurity threats today, and the impact on its victims is significant, with many organisations taking months to recover. 

"With bad actors now leveraging AI technology to create and improve upon malware like ransomware, the threat to public and private organisations worldwide is only going to increase."

Chris consequently emphasises the importance of having adequate defences.

"If – or more likely in today's climate, when – your business is targeted, you need to know that you have adequate defences in place to keep an attack from doing real damage." 

The best defence is a prepared one

Planning for the worst by thinking holistically and adequately leveraging AI and cloud technology can safeguard your business against the constantly developing threat landscape, helping you to successfully navigate this brave new world.

"When the worst does happen, it's crucial to have the right hardware, software and solutions in place to not only give you peace of mind but prevent serious consequences."

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