In 2006, at a major Russian conference, the Doctor of Technical Sciences made a presentation on the growing information space. In beautiful schemes and examples, the scientist talked about the fact that in 5-10 years in developed countries, information will come to each person in an amount that he cannot fully perceive. He talked about wireless networks, the Internet available at every turn and wearable electronics, and especially about the fact that information will need to be protected, but it will not be possible to provide this protection 100%. Well, this is how we formulate it now, but then the audience accepted him as a crazy professor who lives in the world of science fiction.
13 years have passed, and a new study by Acronis has shown that fantasy has long since become reality. International Backup Day is the best time to talk about the results and give some important tips on how to stay protected in the face of dozens of networks, gigabytes of incoming information and heaps of gadgets at hand. And yes, this applies to companies too.
For cool IT people - a competition inside.
Did you make a backup? Exactly exactly?
Disclaimer
If you are a system administrator tired of corporate life, a security guard exhausted by fakups of users and you know exactly where data security problems grow from, then you can immediately go to the end of the article - there are 4 cool tasks, by solving which you can win useful prizes from Acronis and there is nowhere to make your information more secure (in fact, there is always where).
Contradiction of contradictions
The first unexpected but understandable result of the survey: 65% of respondents reported that in the past year, either they themselves or one of their relatives experienced data loss as a result of accidental file deletion or hardware or software failures. This figure increased by 29,4% compared to the previous year.
At the same time, for the first time in the five-year history of research conducted by Acronis, almost all surveyed consumers (92,7%) back up data from their own computers. The growth of this indicator was 24%.
Here is how Stanislav Protasov, president and chief operating officer of Acronis, explains the contradiction:
“At first glance, these two conclusions seem contradictory, because how can there be a loss of more data if almost all users began to backup them? However, there are reasons why these survey numbers look the way they do. People are using more devices and accessing data from more locations than ever before, creating more reasons to lose data. For example, users can back up data stored on a laptop, but if they accidentally leave a smartphone in a taxi that they do not back up, the data will still be lost.”
That is, the reason was our very reality, where we not only get tired of information, but also do not have time to control all sources of danger, which means we can quickly and adequately respond to them. It turns out that against the background of automation and informatization, the human factor begins to play a particularly important and even critical role.
Briefly about the survey
Users from the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, France, Japan, Singapore, Bulgaria and Switzerland took part in the survey.
This year, the survey was conducted among business users for the first time. Due to the increasing number of cases of CEOs, IT managers and other executives losing their jobs due to data breaches, online attacks and computer errors, Acronis decided to include data protection issues relevant to them in the study. The inclusion of business users revealed several differences in how and why users and companies protect their digital assets.
View Poll Results: let's learn from others' mistakes
Only 7% of users make no effort to protect their own data
There are many devices
The number of devices used by consumers continues to grow, with 68,9% of households reporting three or more devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets. This figure increased by 7,6% compared to the previous year.
Users realize the value of information
Given the increase in natural and man-made disasters, high-profile extortions, and data breaches, with increased data volumes, an increase in data redundancy indicates that consumers are still trying to protect their data. This year, only 7% of users said they never backed up data, compared to almost a third of respondents (31,4%) last year.
Users have begun to value their own data more, as evidenced by the fact that 69,9% are willing to spend more than $50 to recover lost files, photos, videos, and other information. Last year, only 15% were willing to pay that amount.
To protect their own data, 62,7% of users keep it close at hand by storing backups on a local external hard drive (48,1%) or on a separate hard drive partition (14,6%). Only 37,4% use the cloud or a hybrid cloud/local backup format.
Clouds are not for everyone
Another clear problem is the lack of active adoption of cloud technologies. A growing number of consumers are saying that the primary value of backing up data is in making it available, with many saying they want "quick and easy access to backed up data from anywhere." But at the same time, only a third of them use cloud technologies for backup, giving them the ability to retrieve data regardless of its location.
Master Data
The main data of value to consumers are contacts, passwords and other personal information (45,8%), as well as multimedia files, including photos, videos, music and games (38,1%).
Users still need educational program
Less than half of consumers are aware of data threats such as ransomware (46%), cryptocurrency mining malware (53%), and social engineering attacks (52%) used to spread malware. Knowledge about such dangers is slow to spread, as evidenced by the fact that the number of users who are aware of ransomware has grown by only 4% compared to last year.
Acronis data protection infographic
Companies actively protect cloud data
Losses from one hour of downtime are estimated at around $300, so business users certainly understand the value of their company's data. As CEOs and senior executives assume more responsibility for data protection, they are becoming increasingly interested in security issues, especially given the increase in the number of high-profile data attacks.
This explains why business users who took part in the survey were already prepared to protect their own data, applications and systems and stated that the most important aspects for them are security in terms of preventing unintentional incidents and security in terms of preventing malicious attacks. action on their data.
Business users were included in the 2019 annual survey for the first time, with responses from companies of all sizes, including 32,7% of small businesses with up to 100 employees, 41% of mid-sized companies with between 101 and 999 employees, and 26,3. 1% of large enterprises with more than 000 employees.
For most companies, data protection becomes one of the most important priorities: for example, companies back up data monthly (25,1%), weekly (24,8%) or daily (25,9%). As a result of these measures, 68,7% said they had no downtime due to data loss last year.
These companies are well aware of the latest risks that threaten their data, as a result of which they have expressed concern or extreme concern regarding ransomware (60,6%), cryptojacking (60,1%) and social engineering (61%).
Today, businesses of all sizes rely on cloud backup, with 48,3% exclusively using cloud backup and 26,8% using a combination of cloud and local backup.
Given their security and data protection concerns, it's understandable that they're interested in the cloud. It is from the point of view of security in the context of inadvertent data loss (“reliable backup so that data can always be restored”) that external cloud backup guarantees the availability of data even if the office premises are destroyed by fire, flood or other natural disasters. From a security point of view in the context of malicious activity (“data protected from online threats and cybercriminals”), the cloud is an obstacle to the deployment of malware.
4 tips for everyone
To protect personal files or ensure business continuity, Acronis recommends following four simple steps to help protect your data. However, these tips will be clearly useful for private users.
- Always back up important data. Store backups both locally (to ensure quick access to them and the possibility of restoring as often as necessary) and in the cloud (to ensure the safety of all data in case of destruction of the office as a result of theft, fire, flood or other natural disasters).
- Regularly update the operating system and software. Using outdated versions of the OS or applications means that bugs remain unpatched, and security patches that help block cybercriminals from accessing the affected system are left uninstalled.
- Pay attention to suspicious emails, links and attachments. Most virus or ransomware infections occur as a result of social engineering, in which users fraudulently open infected email attachments or click on links that lead to malware websites.
- Install antivirus software and run automatic system updates to protect it from the latest known threats. Windows users must confirm that Windows Defender is active and up to date.
How can Acronis help you?With the incredibly fast evolution of today's data threats, businesses and users are looking for data protection solutions that provide maximum protection, including flexible local, hybrid and cloud backups and powerful antivirus software.
Only backup solutions from Acronis ( for companies and for individual users) offers active protection against ransomware and cryptojacking based on artificial intelligence, capable of detecting and blocking malware in real time and automatically recovering any damaged files. The technology is so effective that it was able to prevent 400 such attacks last year.
A new version of such integrated protection called recently received a new recognition function and for cryptocurrency mining. Acronis Active Protection update released in autumn 2018 blocked during the first months of operation.
→ Acronis and Habr competition for the International Backup Day - tasks for IT workers
Today, March 31, is International Backup Day. This is at least a reason to make a backup in anticipation of the April Fool's drawings, and at the very least - to win prizes from Acronis. Especially Sunday evening to this has.
This time on horseback Acronis True Image 2019 Cyber Protection annual license with 1 TB of cloud storage - 5 winners will receive it.
We will additionally give the first three:
- for 1st place - portable acoustics
- for 2nd place - power bank
- 3rd place - Acronis mug
To participate, you need to solve difficult (as always), but interesting puzzles. The first is simple, the second and third are mediocre, and the fourth is for real hardcore players.
→ Task 1
Samolyub Pasha loves to encrypt texts, what did he encrypt this time? Ciphertext:
tnuyyet sud qaurue → Task 2
What plugins for popular CMS (WordPress, Drupal and others) do you recommend for backup and migration. Why are they worse / better than regular backups and Aplication Aware backups.
→ Task 3
How to correctly work with the registry data of your application starting with Windows 8. It is desirable to give an example of correctly updating two values in the registry key. Why is the backup not able to solve the problem of the logical consistency of the registry?
→ Task 4
Vasya wants to load a dll into a child process (created with the SUSPENDED flag), the dll name was copied using VirtualAllocEx/WriteProcessMemory
CreateRemoteThread( hChildProcess, nullptr, 0, LoadLibraryA, remoteDllName, 0, nullptr);
But because in the child process, kernelbase.dll is located at a different address.
On 64-bit Windows, EnumModulesEx does not work at this point. Suggest 3 methods to find the address of kernelbase.dll in a frozen child process.
It is desirable to implement one of the methods.
Well, the rest of Habr's readers have one important and necessary wish: made backups - sleep well!
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Do you back up personal information?
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I make backups of information from a personal PC
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I make backups of information from a smartphone
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I make backups of information from the tablet
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I make backups from any device
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I do not back up personal information
45 users voted. 3 users abstained.
Does your company make backups?
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Yes, how else!
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We make backups of only the most important information
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We do it when we remember
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We do not
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I don't do it, I don't know
44 users voted. 4 users abstained.
Have you and your loved ones lost, leaked, or hacked personal data?
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Yes
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No
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Didn't track
44 users voted. 2 users abstained.
Have there been data losses, leaks, hacks in your company?
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Yes, until 2018
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Yes, in 2018
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Yes, all the time
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No, there was no such thing - the information is not particularly valuable
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I don't do it, I don't know
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No, there was no such thing - powerful information protection
39 users voted. 3 users abstained.
Source: habr.com