The Backup Illusion
Many financial services IT leaders believe they’re protected against ransomware because they have backups. According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2025, 64% of financial services organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year. Of those with backups, a significant percentage discovered their backup infrastructure had been compromised too.
Modern ransomware operators don’t just encrypt production data. They specifically target backup systems, delete shadow copies, and corrupt recovery infrastructure before launching their attack. The backup you’re counting on may not exist when you need it.
How Modern Ransomware Targets Backup Infrastructure
Extended Dwell Time: Attackers typically spend weeks or months inside networks before deploying ransomware. During this time, they map environments, identify backup systems, and extract credentials. Your recent backups likely contain attacker persistence mechanisms.
Credential Harvesting: Backup systems require elevated privileges. Attackers target these credentials specifically. If your backup infrastructure uses domain-joined servers with domain admin accounts, compromising Active Directory gives attackers keys to your recovery capability.
Backup Deletion: Before encrypting production systems, sophisticated attackers delete or corrupt backup repositories, local snapshots, and cloud backup destinations. The goal is ensuring victims have no choice but to pay.
Double Extortion: Attackers exfiltrate sensitive data before deploying ransomware, threatening to publish it if ransom isn’t paid. For financial services, this creates exposure even if you can recover from backups.
Why Traditional Backup Falls Short
Network-Connected Storage: Backup repositories accessible via standard network protocols can be reached by attackers who’ve compromised your network. If backup storage is mounted as a drive, it’s vulnerable to the same encryption attacks.
Mutable Data: Traditional backup systems allow modification and deletion by design. Without immutability protection, backups are only as secure as the credentials protecting them.
Inadequate Retention: If attackers have been in your environment for 60 days and backup retention is 30 days, every backup is potentially compromised. Short retention eliminates the possibility of recovering from a known-clean point.
Building Genuine Ransomware Resilience
Immutable Backups: Immutable backups cannot be modified or deleted before retention expires, even by administrators. Veeam’s hardened repository and S3 Object Lock provide this protection at the storage layer.
Air-Gapped Recovery: True air gaps mean physical or logical separation from production networks. Cloud-based DR solutions can provide this isolation inherently, with backup data in separate environments using independent authentication.
Extended Retention: Maintain 90-180 days of backup history for financial services. The cost of additional storage is minimal compared to having no clean recovery point.
Regular Recovery Testing: Test full environment recovery regularly, not just individual file restores. Document procedures, time requirements, and dependencies.
Build Your Ransomware Recovery Strategy
As a Veeam Platinum VCSP Partner and 2024 Veeam Innovation Award winner, Opti9 specializes in ransomware-resilient data protection for financial services. Opti9 Observr, our ransomware detection solution verified by CyPROS, adds protection by identifying threats before they impact your data.
Get in touch today to assess your ransomware resilience.
