Microsoft Prevents Ransomware With Software Company Acquisition

JAKARTA - In order to avoid ransomware attacks on its Azure cloud service, Microsoft has finally invested in a software company, Rubrik.

Rubrik and Microsoft plan to provide Microsoft 365, data protection, and cloud services on Azure. If a customer is hit by a ransomware attack, Rubrik's protection will recover their important data without paying the hackers.

"When attackers tell you that they have control of your data keys and you can't get them back without paying a ransom, this allows us to have an alternative source for that data in real time to be able to bring the company back for operational control." said Microsoft vice president, Tyler Bryson.

Quoting Bloomberg via ZDNet, Monday, August 23, Microsoft declined to comment on how much money they spent, but many thought it was in the tens of millions of dollars, and Rubik's has a value of about 4 billion US dollars.

Rubrik, launched in 2014 is a cloud-based enterprise backup and restore service, targeting customers running storage with legacy software. Starting with the idea of modernizing the data backup software market, taking on previous generation vendors such as EMC, now part of Dell Technologies Inc. and Veritas, which is now owned by the Carlyle Group.

"The two companies will jointly sell Microsoft Azure cloud-based software to prevent, find, and recover from ransomware attacks. The product also ensures backup copies of customer data and cloud software are not compromised by hackers," said Chief Executive Officer and Co-CEO. Founder of the Bipul Sinha Rubric.

Today the company also shares 2,000 customers globally. Rubrik provides cloud backup and restore services across Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft 365, as well as ransomware recovery services.

Microsoft made the investment because it wanted to adopt a Zero Trust architecture, which focuses less on hardening the network perimeter and aims to protect BYOD devices and applications used at work and at home.

The partnership will also help customers continue digital transformation projects and push more data to the cloud. Rubrik said the combination with Microsoft's cloud will allow customers to protect critical applications such as SAP, SQL, Oracle and VMware, as well as network attached storage (NAS) devices with Azure.

Microsoft sees an opportunity to make the cloud its primary defense against an increase in ransomware attacks, which often occur as a result of attackers scanning and finding exposed RDP and VPNs on the internet. This year there has been an increase in demand for millions of dollars in ransomware that victims, such as Colonial Pipeline, have to pay.

"There are many backup solutions out there, but even those solutions are vulnerable to compromise. If you don't design with a modern cloud architecture, you may find that you've just restored something that was compromised," says Bryson.