Updated August 2025
Key Takeaways:
- Modern ransomware is human-operated and stealthy. Today’s attacks use legitimate tools and persistent tactics — making proactive detection and recovery essential.
- Mapping defenses to the MITRE ATT&CK framework is critical. You can enhance this strategy with IOCs and suspicious tooling behavior detection within backup environments.
- Immutable backups are your last line of defense. Using hardened repositories and cloud-based immutability helps prevent ransomware from altering or deleting backup data.
- Recovery assurance starts with testing. Tools like malware scanning, threat detection, and isolated cleanroom environments play a critical role in validating backups before they are restored to production.
- Resilience requires layers, not just tools. Prevention, detection, response, and recovery must work together across infrastructure, people, and processes.
Ransomware attacks are now one of the most common and costly disasters that organizations fear and face. According to the 2025 Veeam Ransomware Trends Report, 69% of companies experienced at least one ransomware attack in the past year, and in most cases, attackers targeted backup repositories directly to sabotage recovery. That makes the question “How can we prevent ransomware?” one of the most pressing challenges for CISOs, CTOs, and IT professionals alike.
While the data tells us that a ransomware or cybersecurity incident is the disaster an IT organization is most likely to deal with, there are actionable steps organizations can take to prevent and remediate ransomware incidents. The definition of ransomware prevention is a combination of training employees throughout your organization, preparation of plans to put into action when an attack does happen and implementing controls and techniques to strengthen data resilience.
What Is Ransomware Prevention?
Ransomware prevention refers to the layered set of practices, tools, and processes designed to reduce the likelihood of an attack and limit its blast radius. It’s a way to prepare fast and secure recovery when it occurs. At its core, ransomware prevention involves:
- Training people to recognize social engineering tactics like phishing
- Hardening systems with least privilege access, MFA, and secure configurations
- Protecting data with immutable, encrypted backups
- And orchestrating a response plan that assumes failure will happen and recovery must follow
The best defense against ransomware threats is playing proactive offense.
Why Ransomware Is the Disaster Most Likely to Occur
The short answer is that ransomware has become a multi-million dollar industry. While natural disasters, hardware failure, or accidental deletion remain concerns, ransomware now accounts for the majority of real-world disruptions. This is because:
- It’s scalable and profitable for attackers (via now prevalent Ransomware as a Service)
- It targets data, which is the core asset of modern organizations and their complex digital environments
- It often bypasses traditional perimeter defenses using phishing, stolen credentials, or supply chain compromise
- It threatens not just downtime but data exfiltration and extortion, multiplying its impact not only on organizations but also customers and partners, as well as putting business operations and reputation at risk
Understanding Ransomware: Technical Mechanics & Attack Vectors
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is the gold standard for understanding adversarial behaviors, especially in the context of ransomware. Not all threats behave the same, and today’s ransomware actors operate more like nation-state-level adversaries than lone hackers. Experts are known to say threat actors “don’t invade — they log in”.
Modern ransomware typically involves a multi-stage, human-operated attack chain, combining credential theft, reconnaissance, privilege escalation, lateral movement, data staging, encryption, and exfiltration. In many cases, the attacker has already spent days or weeks (and, in some cases, much longer as they wait for the highest bidder or the right time) inside the environment before launching the actual payload.
Each of the techniques and sub-techniques seen in these attacks map to common TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) outlined in the MITRE ATT&CK matrix. These include:
- Initial Access: Phishing, exploiting public-facing applications, or stolen credentials
- Execution: PowerShell, command-line interface (CLI), scheduled tasks
- Persistence: Registry run keys, startup items, and service installs
- Privilege Escalation: Credential dumping tools like Mimikatz or LSASS scraping
- Defense Evasion: Obfuscated scripts, living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins), tampering with security tools
- Lateral Movement: Remote desktop (RDP), Windows Admin Shares, PsExec
- Impact: Encryption, destruction of shadow copies, or file corruption
It is important to understand that threat actors don’t always deploy custom malware. In fact, most campaigns involve blended tooling — a mix of legitimate enterprise software (like RDP or PsExec) and repurposed open-source or hacker toolkits (like LaZagne or Cobalt Strike). This makes detection and attribution harder, especially for organizations relying solely on signature-based defenses.
Map Defenses Using MITRE ATT&CK
The MITRE ATT&CK framework offers a comprehensive taxonomy of adversary behavior. But its true value is realized when organizations use it to drive defense-in-depth decisions.
Rather than focusing on individual indicators (like file hashes or IPs), ATT&CK maps entire attack chains, allowing security teams to:
- Predict how threats evolve
- Correlate detection logic across systems
- Build layered defenses that disrupt attackers at multiple points
For ransomware, this is especially critical because attacks rarely rely on a single vector. They typically chain together multiple TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures) from different stages of the ATT&CK matrix.
Veeam integrates with this approach by enabling detection of indicators of compromise (IOCs) within backup environments. It’s a unique advantage for organizations focused on last-line defense and recovery assurance.
Veeam + MITRE ATT&CK Alignment
While Veeam is not a threat detection tool in the traditional sense, it extends detection and response coverage into the backup layer, where ransomware often lurks unnoticed. Key alignments include:
- Backup IOCs matching known exfiltration or encryption tools (RClone, WinRAR, etc.)
- YARA-based scans to identify malware patterns within recovery points
- File entropy analysis to spot potential encryption at rest
- Integration with SIEM platforms (Splunk, Sentinel, etc.) to report anomalies in backup jobs
Veeam adds unique visibility into stages often neglected by endpoint and network tools. It makes ATT&CK mapping even more powerful when layered across your infrastructure.
What is Modern Ransomware
It’s fair to say that today’s ransomware is no longer the CryptoLocker or WannaCry of the past. What we now face is modern ransomware. It’s a complex, multi-stage campaign operated by real people, using legitimate tools, stolen credentials, and advanced tactics to quietly infiltrate and devastate an organization.
Modern ransomware combines TTPs from frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, with the intentionality and patience of a human adversary. These attacks often begin with initial access via phishing or VPN compromise, followed by weeks of stealthy lateral movement, privilege escalation, and data exfiltration, long before any encryption happens.
Many organizations still base their security strategy on legacy threats, ones that only encrypted a handful of machines and could be solved with a reimage. That comfort is dangerous. Modern strains like LockBit, Akira, and BlackCat target backups, Active Directory, and cloud credentials. They are often operated by affiliate groups using Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), complete with dashboards, playbooks, and support.
The best mindset for defending against these attacks is to assume that the attacker:
- Understands your infrastructure,
- Has unlimited time and persistence,
- And is already inside your environment.
That’s why red teaming has become a cornerstone of ransomware preparedness. In these exercises, IT teams design a system with resiliency in mind and then simulate an attacker trying to break it using the exact same TTPs that modern ransomware actors deploy. It’s not just an exercise in offense; it’s a test of your recovery posture, visibility, and response coordination.
Attackers today come armed with:
- Powerful dual-use tools like Cobalt Strike, AdFind, and Mimikatz
- AI-enhanced payloads and evasion
- Privileged access through credential theft or MFA fatigue
- Tactics like double extortion, threatening to publish data even after payment
In short: modern ransomware doesn’t act like malware — it behaves like an adversary.
Common Attack Vectors and Execution Chains
Ransomware attacks follow a well-structured sequence of steps known as an execution chain or kill chain. These chains typically begin with stealthy access and reconnaissance and end in data encryption, exfiltration, or destruction. While specific tools and methods vary, most ransomware incidents can be traced back to three foundational weaknesses:
Phishing, Unpatched Software, And Insecure Remote Access
Some of the most commonly exploited attack techniques include:
- Discovery (MITRE ID# T1087, T1018): Mapping users, domains, and systems
- Lateral Movement (T1021): Using RDP, SMB, or PsExec to move across the network
- Credential Access (T1003): Dumping passwords via Mimikatz or LSASS access
- Defense Evasion (T1562): Tampering with backups, EDR tools, and shadow copies
- Exfiltration (T1041): Using tools like RClone or WinSCP to exfiltrate data before encryption
A good example is Akira ransomware, a modern, human-operated threat known for its sophisticated toolset and multi-stage behavior chain. During attacks, Akira operators have been observed using:
AdFind – Active Directory enumeration tool used for reconnaissance
AnyDesk / SoftPerfect – Remote access tools abused for persistence and control
LaZagne / Mimikatz – Credential theft from browsers, memory, and keychains
PowerShell / PCHunter64 – Scripted execution and privilege escalation
Ngrok / WinSCP – Command-and-control tunneling and data exfiltration
RClone / WinRAR – Encrypting or archiving stolen data before exfil
Task Scheduler / PsExec – For automated execution or lateral movement
Many of these are legitimate administrative tools, which makes them difficult to detect using traditional security controls. This is a core challenge in ransomware defense: TTPs blur the line between normal enterprise activity and malicious behavior.
Leverage the MITRE ATT&CK Framework for Ransomware
One of the most practical ways to strengthen ransomware defenses is to align your detection, prevention, and recovery strategies to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. This framework catalogs the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by real-world threat actors, including those behind modern ransomware.
By mapping observed or potential attacker behavior to ATT&CK, security teams can:
- Pinpoint where existing defenses are strong or weak
- Develop behavioral detections based on common ransomware patterns
- Train SOC analysts and red teams using real TTPs
Detecting Rogue Tooling and Unexpected Behavior
A core principle in ransomware defense is tooling awareness. That means:
- Knowing what tools are standard and approved in your IT environment
- Flagging the arrival or use of unauthorized or suspicious tools
For example, an attacker might introduce RClone, WinSCP, or Cobalt Strike — tools commonly used in ransomware campaigns but not typically seen in standard enterprise software stacks. Visibility into this deviation from the norm can be the difference between early detection and a delayed response.
This is where Veeam’s Indicators of Compromise (IOC) Detection comes into play. During backup operations, Veeam can detect known ransomware tools and behaviors by comparing activity against an updated list of IOCs. If rogue binaries or malicious patterns are found, such as tools used in reconnaissance, credential harvesting, or exfiltration, admins can be alerted in near real-time, and recovery options like Secure Restore can be triggered.
Practical Ways to Apply MITRE ATT&CK in Ransomware Readiness
| Baseline Your Environment: | ⦁ Use ATT&CK to identify expected TTPs in your environment versus suspicious ones. Unexpected tooling behavior = high-fidelity alerting opportunity. ⦁ Use ATT&CK Navigator: Visualize which techniques you cover with existing controls and which are unmonitored. |
| Focus on ransomware-relevant TTPs like: | ⦁ T1021 (Remote Services) ⦁ T1047 (WMI Execution) ⦁ T1486 (Data Encryption for Impact) ⦁ T1562 (Disable Security Tools) |
| Map Veeam IOC alerts to MITRE techniques: | When Veeam flags suspicious activity, reference the corresponding TTP (e.g., RClone = T1048.002: Exfiltration over alternative protocol). |
| Simulate TTPs in recovery testing: | When running ransomware readiness drills or testing cleanroom restores, incorporate attacker TTPs into scenarios to validate visibility and detection. |
Ransomware Protection Tips
There are several ransomware protection tips that have been proven effective in the market. At the top of the list is having one or more immutable copies of backup data. These backups should also be encrypted, and the encryption key must be protected to the highest level. Ideally, it should be stored separately and with multi-factor access controls.
Another critical component is having a well-defined incident response (IR) plan in place. That means knowing:
- Who owns the response
- Who the executive sponsor is
- Which internal and external stakeholders need to be informed
- And what the communication strategy looks like. That includes legal, compliance, and even PR steps if data is exfiltrated
One of the most overlooked protection strategies is to think in reverse — to work backward from common attack paths. Coveware by Veeam regularly publishes insights into ransomware incident root causes, and the data is clear.
The top three initial access vectors are:
- Remote access compromise
- Phishing attacks
- Unpatched software vulnerabilities
Each of these vectors represents a low-cost, high-impact entry point for attackers. That means the most practical, proactive ransomware protection advice can be summarized as:
- Secure remote access systems: Disable unused services like RDP, use VPNs with MFA, and monitor login anomalies
- Train employees to spot phishing attempts: Run simulations and reinforce reporting protocols
- Patch and update software systems regularly: Prioritize critical vulnerabilities, automate where possible, and validate patching effectiveness
Ransomware prevention is not about setting up just one control function. It’s about layering controls across your people, processes, and platforms. Immutable backups give you recovery assurance, but true resilience comes from tightening the front door before attackers get inside.
Architecting for Resilience: Prevention, Protection, and Defense Strategies
The end goal for many organizations is to run IT operations that are both protected from ransomware and ready to respond to it. The foundational advice remains simple but powerful:
- Train employees to recognize phishing
- Secure all forms of remote access
- Keep operating systems, software, and firmware patched
While many organizations may not be able to implement all controls at once, the key is to start somewhere and phishing is an excellent first step. Every employee is a potential target. Phishing continues to be one of the top vectors for initial compromise.
Why Backup Strategy Matters
Among all technical controls, immutable backups play the most critical role in ransomware resilience. That’s why the most widely accepted standard in modern backup architecture is:
The 3-2-1-1-0 Backup Rule which calls for:
- 3 copies of your data
- 2 different types of media
- 1 copy off-site
- 1 copy that is immutable, offline, or air-gapped
- 0 recovery surprises, meaning regular verification and threat scanning
This method doesn’t rely on any specific vendor or hardware, which makes it versatile and achievable across enterprise or SMB environments. And increasingly, organizations are not stopping at one immutable copy, they are deploying two or even three immutable layers for maximum assurance.
The Veeam Approach to Zero Trust and Backup Architecture
What makes Veeam especially compelling here is how it applies zero trust principles to backup design. In Veeam’s architecture:
- The data plane (where backup data resides) is separated from the control plane (where backup jobs are managed)
- There is no persistent connection between Veeam and immutable storage targets, whether on-prem hardened Linux repositories, object storage, or cloud services
- This reduces the risk of a compromised backup server being used to destroy the data it manages
If your organization does not have at least one immutable backup in place, this represents a critical gap in the data protection strategy, one that should be addressed immediately.
Veeam makes immutability broadly accessible through: on-prem Hardened Repositories (Linux-based, local control); Veeam Data Cloud Vault (immutable, fixed-price storage as a service); object storage with immutability policies; cloud and service provider offerings via Veeam Cloud Connect.
With over half a million customers, Veeam doesn’t have a technical support case on record where an organization was unable to recover data when backups were in an immutable target such as the cloud and the customer has the encryption key.
This is incredibly powerful, but also an important call to action to one of the most overlooked design principles that is seen in the space.
Final Consideration: Secure Your Secrets
A final, and often overlooked, piece of backup architecture is the secure handling of secrets. Just as organizations protect privileged passwords in vaults or secret management tools, they should also protect:
- Backup encryption keys
- Public and private keys for object storage
- Credentials to cloud backup targets
- Access to the Veeam licensing and management portals
Together, these architectural decisions form a resilient, verifiable, and secure strategy. It enables you to recover quicker when ransomware strikes, and ensures your organization never has to consider ransom as a fallback.
Proactive Detection and Monitoring for Ransomware Anomalies
There’s no shortage of ways to proactively detect ransomware, but it’s the work that matters most. Anomalies can be subtle or obvious: a few unexpected file changes might be routine. But it can also be the beginning of a threat actor staging an attack. Thousands of file deletions or encryptions? That’s already impact.
What matters is correlating these events with your security stack. Detection only works when it’s connected across backup, endpoints, network, and SIEM.
Priority Areas for Ransomware Anomaly Detection
- AI-powered Ransomware Detection:
Scans backup data blocks for high entropy (randomness), onion links, ransom notes, and encryption patterns.
- Indicators of Compromise (IOC) Detection
Identifies known attacker tools (e.g., RClone, Cobalt Strike) and behaviors during backup jobs, alerting on match.
- File System Activity Analysis
Signature-based scans detect suspicious file extensions and malicious patterns stored in backup datasets.
- Observability and AI Insight (Veeam ONE)
Flags unusual VM behavior, brute force activity on ESXi or vCenter, and SSH anomalies, before the backup even runs.
Data-at-Rest: A Powerful Layer of Detection
One of the most overlooked surfaces for detection is your backup repository. Because backups aren’t live systems, they present a low-risk, high-fidelity detection layer.
Here’s how Veeam leverages this for proactive ransomware monitoring:
- Threat Hunter Scan: Automatically runs after backup completion to scan restore points for threats.
- Signature-based Malware Scanning: Integrated with Secure Restore, it uses secondary AV engines to scan backed-up data before recovery.
- Orchestrated Restore & Cleanroom Testing: Veeam Recovery Orchestrator enables fully isolated cleanroom testing with YARA rules and antivirus scanning. You can validate recovery before placing workloads back in production.
Proactive detection is about finding the early warning signs and not just relying on alerts after damage is done. With Veeam’s layered monitoring, organizations can detect, validate, and isolate ransomware faster — even before recovery becomes necessary.
Implementing Secure Backup Infrastructure: Veeam Hardened Repository & Beyond
Ransomware is one of the key reasons why implementing a secure, resilient backup infrastructure is no longer optional. Threat actors target not just production data, but backups themselves. That makes your data backup environment a primary security asset which must be hardened accordingly.
The most essential building block of ransomware-resistant architecture is an immutable backup repository. This type of backup cannot be altered or deleted, even by an administrator.
Veeam Hardened Repository
The Veeam Hardened Repository was designed specifically for on-premises deployments that need strong immutability without added cost or vendor lock-in. What it does:
- Supports immutability natively using Linux-based hardened mode
- Runs on virtually any hardware
- Has no additional licensing or storage fees
- Protects backups from modification or deletion during the retention period
This makes it ideal for mid-sized and enterprise environments looking to add ransomware resilience without overhauling their infrastructure.
Beyond On-Prem: Veeam Cloud Immutability Options
Veeam’s support for immutable backups goes far beyond on-prem environments. It also includes:
- Veeam Cloud Connect with Insider Protection. It allows service providers to store undeletable tenant backup copies, even if the primary tenant account is compromised
- Immutable object storage from hyperscalers (e.g., AWS S3 Object Lock, Azure Immutable Blob)
- Over 60 Veeam-ready storage solutions from third-party vendors across on-prem, public, and storage cloud environments
- Veeam Data Cloud Vault. This is a fixed-price, always-immutable, always-encrypted backup storage-as-a-service, integrated directly into the Veeam Data Platform
Don’t Count Out Tape
Tape storage still has a vital role to play, especially when WORM (Write Once, Read Many) settings are enabled:
- It is offline, air-gapped, and immutable all at the same time
- Offers low acquisition costs and high portability
- Delivers true isolation that is ideal for protecting long-term and regulatory backup copies
Even organizations moving away from traditional tape for long-term retention are now repurposing tape for short-term, air-gapped backup copies. Strategies include:
- Partial ejection from tape libraries (e.g., 2mm tape ejects)
- Rotating tapes in and out of secure libraries
- Using tape as a final “vault” tier in a multi-layer backup architecture
From immutable backups on disk with the Veeam Hardened Repository to a cloud immutable target for any budget and use case, Veeam has ultra-resilient media options for everyone.
Ransomware Incident Response & Orchestrated Recovery
All of the advice is good, but what do we do when something bad happens? Ideally, a plan is activated. There is no textbook disaster, so should there be Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C? Yes. And to add another wrinkle, incidents often occur when the data protection SME is out of the office. So, provide enough cross-training and documented runbooks.
Sometimes expert guidance is essential. Incident response services can be the missing link, and with Coveware by Veeam that can be the difference between managing a response correctly and losing valuable time or insight.
Another undeniable truth: what you do now determines what happens later. The time to act is now. Talk to the Veeam team and we’ll help you get where you need to be.
Quick playbook (use or adapt):
- Activate the IR plan and command structure; establish an out-of-band comms channel.
- Contain and preserve: isolate affected systems, stop spread, preserve logs/artifacts (don’t wipe).
- Engage experts: Coveware by Veeam IR, legal/compliance, and comms teams as required.
- Validate backups: identify the last known-good backup, confirm immutability, use Secure Restore (AV/YARA) before recovery.
- Orchestrate cleanroom recovery: use Veeam Recovery Orchestrator to test app dependencies and stage production re-entry.
- Communicate & comply: internal/external stakeholders, regulators where applicable; then run a post-incident review and update controls.
Readiness essentials: versioned runbooks (with offline copies), on-call rotation, least-privileged break-glass accounts, and regular tabletop/cleanroom exercises tied to RTO/RPO targets.
Why Veeam: Your Strategic Partner for End-to End Ransomware Prevention and Resilience
Have you seen Veeam lately? This is the takeaway when it comes to selecting Veeam as your strategic partner for end-to-end ransomware protection and resilience. This was the core message that was brought recently to Security Field Day 134, where Veeam showcased capabilities around ransomware detection, security innovations, the partnerships of the security ecosystem, an overview of Coveware by Veeam and a view into the upcoming capabilities from Veeam.
Today, organizations need more than just backup. They need a trusted ally with the vision, innovation, and expertise to safeguard their most valuable digital assets. Veeam stands apart as your strategic partner for end-to-end ransomware prevention and resilience. We deliver advanced protection, rapid recovery, and proactive threat detection across every workload and environment. With Veeam, you gain industry-leading data security and cyber recovery capabilities, as well as the confidence to face future challenges head-on, knowing your business continuity, expansion, and reputation are protected at every turn.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the most effective way to protect backups from ransomware?
The most effective defense is to maintain at least one immutable backup which cannot be altered or deleted, even by an admin. This can be achieved using hardened storage repositories, cloud object storage with immutability settings, or air-gapped media. - What attack techniques do modern ransomware actors use?
Modern ransomware actors use a multi-stage attack chain involving phishing, credential theft, lateral movement, backup tampering, and data exfiltration. Many use legitimate tools like PsExec, RClone, and Mimikatz, making them harder to detect. - How does the MITRE ATT&CK framework help with ransomware prevention?
The MITRE ATT&CK framework helps organizations understand and map adversary behaviors across each stage of the attack. By aligning detection and response strategies to common tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), security teams can identify gaps, strengthen defenses, and simulate real-world attack scenarios. - Can ransomware infect backup data?
Yes, if backups are not properly secured. Attackers often target backups to sabotage recovery. That’s why immutable storage, encrypted backups, and isolating backup repositories (air-gapping) are critical. - What should an incident response plan for ransomware include?
An effective plan should include:
⦁ A defined command structure
⦁ Out-of-band communication channels
⦁ Tools for backup validation and cleanroom recovery
⦁ Stakeholder and compliance communications
⦁ Regular tabletop exercises - What is the 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule?
It’s a resilient backup architecture standard:
⦁ 3 copies of data
⦁ 2 different media types
⦁ 1 offsite copy
⦁ 1 immutable or air-gapped copy
⦁ 0 errors during recovery (verified/tested backups) - What is modern ransomware and how is it different from legacy threats?
Modern ransomware is human-operated, stealthy, and leverages legitimate tools. Unlike older strains, it doesn’t just encrypt files. It steals data, disables backups, and often extorts payment through double extortion tactics.