NAS storage protection against ransomware

[slippyjim]

Hi,

My client recently got infected with the Spora ransomware and it infected his PC and the file server so he had to pay to get his files back (please dont say "dont pay blah blah blah", he had to!), he has an external USB drive for backup but he hadnt done it for several months. Now I am thinking of fitting a NAS and doing a daily backup but I am concerned that if something similar happens again it will just infect the backup files on the NAS via the network like it did before.
Is there a way I can implement an automatic daily backup that is resistant to these, or all, kinds of malware?

Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

Hi,

My client recently got infected with the Spora ransomware and it infected his PC and the file server so he had to pay to get his files back (please dont say "dont pay blah blah blah", he had to!), he has an external USB drive for backup but he hadnt done it for several months. Now I am thinking of fitting a NAS and doing a daily backup but I am concerned that if something similar happens again it will just infect the backup files on the NAS via the network like it did before.
Is there a way I can implement an automatic daily backup that is resistant to these, or all, kinds of malware?

Thanks

Anything that the PC can see is vulnerable. And the PC needs to see some folder in the NAS to write the backup to.
You get around this by letting the NAS do some stuff internally.

So...
You create a subfolder in the NAS box that the PC has permissions to.
Write the daily backup to that folder. "MyBackups"
Within the NAS...you create a whole different folder, that the PC knows nothing about and does not have permissions to.
You cause the NAS to copy "MyBackups" to a whole different folder..."NASBackups"...on whatever schedule you wish.

Since the PC and the potential ransomware cannot see or connect to the folder NASBackups, that cannot get infected from the PC.
And the NAS box, running some Linux variant, can't run a PC virus.

Also, you want more than a single daily backup. You want a little history.
My systems do an incremental every night, keeping 2 weeks worth. So I could go back to last Tuesday (or whatever) if needed.
See this thread for some ways to do this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

 

[slippyjim]

I was wondering if what you described was possible.
Are all NAS's capable of doing some internal copying? Could I use his current USB drive as the extra backup by plugging it directly into the NAS and then setting up the NAS to backup any new files to that?

I plan on having a full backup every week and an incremental every other day and keeping 1 or 2 months worth in total

 

[USAFRet]

I was wondering if what you described was possible.
Are all NAS's capable of doing some internal copying? Could I use his current USB drive as the extra backup by plugging it directly into the NAS and then setting up the NAS to backup any new files to that?

I plan on having a full backup every week and an incremental every other day and keeping 1 or 2 months worth in total

Depending on the specific OS on the NAS, it should be able to do that.
And yes, the external has currently has would work just fine.

I have a QNAP TS-453A

PC's backed up to the NAS nightly.
The entirety of the NAS gets backed up to an external 8TB drive every wednesday.
The PC's have no direct access to that external drive, so they cannot infect it.

 

[slippyjim]

Excellent, I'll look into that.

Many thanks