Line by Line Open (LTO) not only reads and writes data faster than magnetic tape, it also creates a different environment for cybercriminals.
Ransomware has long been one of the cyberattacks CIOs fear the most, in part because it’s become so prevalent. When it comes to ransomware, the question isn’t if your company will be attacked, but when. Since ChatGPT was made public in 2022, cybercriminals have been able to use the intelligence it developed to launch highly effective attacks at scale. In fact, according to the Accenture 2024 report, the number of ransomware attacks has increased by 76% since then. The average cost of a data breach is also significant, reaching a staggering $4.45 million by 2023, according to IBM’s “Cost of a Data Breach” report.
Security vendors responded with a blanket defence. While a multi layered defence in depth is a powerful attack, as long as data is online, cybercriminals will eventually find a way to access it, especially with tools that have become part of their arsenal of knowledge. Data backups are touted as the last line of defence against ransomware, but if those backups are stored online (at home or in the cloud), the real ransomware package is designed to find and destroy them.
There’s only one sure fire way to protect data backups from ransomware attacks, and that’s by air-gapping them. Because cybercriminals can’t access the network, data that’s not connected to a network isn’t vulnerable to ransomware. In fact, the old 3-2-1 rule of data protection (keep three copies of your data on two different storage media, one offsite) now has some math added up. The new 3-2-1-1-0 rule requires organizations to keep offline copies and all backups to be error-free.
Tape was the storage medium CIOs used for backup for decades. While tape may seem like a technology in our traditional age, innovation never stops, especially with Linear Tape-Open (LTO). First introduced in 2000, LTO provides high speed for applications such as long-term data storage and retention, data backup, data offloading, and offline storage. As LTO capacity continues to expand, the technology has evolved into a low-cost, high-capacity, reliable, portable, and secure data protection solution. LTO complements disk, flash, and cloud storage solutions.
LTO’s advantage over other types of regular equipment isn’t just the difference in weather conditions. While accessing data stored on disk is faster, LTO can read and write data faster. If you’ve been hit by ransomware, you’ll need to recover a lot of data. Spending an extra minute or two to access data during recovery won’t make a big difference, but the higher read and write speeds will definitely make a difference, especially when comparing LTO to the cloud. Transferring data from the cloud to an on-premises location can be slow, and the size of your bill for all the egress fees will make you feel like you have to pay the ransom yourself.
LTO is far from being an outdated technology, it’s a modern technology that’s easy to use, cheap (around $100 per box), and impervious to ransomware.
