When Your Backups Become the Target: Building Cyber Resilience That Lasts

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a reminder that in today’s threat landscape, attackers don’t just aim to break in — they aim to break your ability to recover. Ransomware groups have learned that encrypting production systems is only half the job. The real payday comes when they infiltrate and destroy backups, leaving organizations with no path to restore data and no choice but to pay.

This tactic — known as backup infiltration — is quietly reshaping how enterprises think about resilience. It’s not enough to detect or defend; you must be able to recover cleanly and confidently. That’s where Dell Technologies helps organizations build cyber resilience that lasts.

The problem: When attackers hold all the cards

In the past, a company’s backup environment was considered off-limits to attackers. Today, it’s their first stop. Modern ransomware operators target backup repositories, credentials, and storage controllers to disable or encrypt recovery copies.

Some industry sources suggest that up to 94% of ransomware attacks attempt to compromise backup environments — making backup resilience a critical line of defense.¹The result isn’t just operational disruption — it’s the loss of leverage, trust, and confidence.

To combat threats targeting backups, organizations must quickly improve threat response in the data protection environment. Dell Managed Detection and Response was recently expanded to do just that through a 24×7 managed security service.

Imagine discovering that every “safe” copy of your business data is infected or encrypted. That’s the new reality many enterprises face. Without clean, isolated, and immutable backups, recovery can take weeks — or not happen at all.

The solution: Making recovery a strategic advantage

Dell Technologies helps organizations move beyond simple backup into true cyber resilience — ensuring that when the worst happens, recovery remains guaranteed, fast, and verifiable.

Here’s how Dell and its partners are making that possible:

1. 1. Early Detection of Anomalies: With PowerProtect Data Manager Anomaly Detection, customers can identify unusual data changes that may indicate cyber threats. This early warning enables customers to take swift action to protect critical data.
   2. Isolate and Protect Critical Backups: With Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery, customers can store immutable copies of their data in an isolated vault, separated from the production network. This isolation ensures that even if attackers breach the main environment, they can’t reach or corrupt the recovery data.
   3. Validate in a Clean Room or Restart Room Before Restoring: Dell’s clean room allows organizations to safely test and verify backups before restoring them into production and the restart room enables rapid recovery of essential operations post-attack.  Both recovery environments help ensure systems are free of malware and corruption for a smooth reintegration into production systems.
   4. Accelerate Recovery with Expert Services: Dell’s Incident Response and Recovery (IRR) Services help customers design and test playbooks that reduce recovery time from weeks to days — providing confidence that recovery is not only possible but repeatable.
   5. Detect Early with Ecosystem Partners: Through Dell’s collaboration with partners such as CrowdStrike, organizations gain earlier visibility into malicious activity targeting backups or storage systems, helping them stop infiltration attempts before damage is done.

For any strategy to be successful, you have to test, validate and improve.  Regular validation and simulation exercises — guided by Dell specialists — turn theoretical resilience into operational readiness. Because in cybersecurity, confidence comes from preparation, not hope.

Real-world impact

Real-World Example: Reduced Recovery Time: As one of Brazil’s largest and most trusted pharmacy chains, Drogaria Araujo has been a pillar of healthcare and retail in Minas Gerais for over 119 years.  Rising cyber threats, along with the need to safeguard sensitive health and business data, made it clear they needed to modernize their infrastructure and solidify their digital backbone.²

The result: Reduced recovery times by 80%, enabling restore operation in days rather than weeks.

Conclusion: Resilience is the new readiness

Every organization today is a potential target — not just for data theft, but for operational paralysis. The question is no longer if you’ll face an attack, but how quickly you can recover when it happens.

Dell Technologies helps enterprises ensure recovery remains a strength, not a vulnerability — combining trusted infrastructure, secure isolation, expert guidance, and ecosystem intelligence to keep business moving, even after a breach.

This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, make resilience your priority.
Learn how Dell Technologies can help your organization stay protected and ready to recover: www.dell.com/cyber-awareness-month.

Source reference:

¹https://www.infrascale.com/data-backup-solutions-statistics-usa/
Dell Technologies Customer Story – Drogaria Araujo