Ransomware Attack at Rackspace
Email Archiving: How Can It Help a Business Stay Operational? At the beginning of December 2022, US-based cloud provider Rackspace suffered a ransomware attack that crippled its Hosted Exchange environment, meaning thousands of its customers can no longer access the provider's Hosted Exchange services. In this blog post, we explain why the failure of the Hosted Exchange environment has such serious consequences for Rackspace's cloud service customers and how they can protect themselves against similar incidents in the future.
Rackspace Ransomware Attack and Its Implications
A ransomware attack has crippled Rackspace's Hosted Exchange environments, resulting in thousands of customers being unable to access data stored on Rackspace's Hosted Exchange servers (particularly email data). It is still unclear when Rackspace's Hosted Exchange environment will be back online. Since emails are still the most important communication tool for many companies and often contain a large amount of business-critical information, this lack of access can paralyze a business and have serious implications on company revenues. Both internal communication and communication with customers and partners (for orders, contracts, payments, etc.) become impossible, as well as searching through old emails and file attachments.
Roland Latzel, Senior Director of Marketing
"The incident once again shows that emails are not automatically secure in the cloud. Companies must take responsibility for their own data, regardless of whether the information is stored internally or with a cloud service provider. Any information in emails can become inaccessible in an instant, not only as a result of a cyber attack but also due to accidental deletion or server failure," he said.
Although cloud providers are responsible for ensuring the availability of their services, the responsibility to protect data managed within cloud services lies with the customer. This is known as the shared responsibility model.
Email Archiving: An Important Component of a Company's Cyber Resilience Strategy
Under the light of this shared responsibility, the increasing use of cloud services and the steady increase in the number of cyber attacks have pushed many companies to take measures to ensure the sustainability of their operations or at least resume them as quickly as possible. Risks of system failures and data loss should be avoided or minimized as much as possible (the current buzzword here is business continuity). Realistically, the question is not when a company will be hit by a cyber attack.
Some of these measures have been incorporated into a strategy known as a cyber resilience strategy, which accounts for many risks that could cause critical systems to fail and business-critical data to be lost.
In the specific case of Rackspace, affected customers using an independent, professional email archiving solution can continue to access their email data even though Rackspace's Hosted Exchange server is currently inaccessible. A professional email archiving solution stores original copies of a company's entire email volume in a centralized, provider-independent archive, regardless of whether these emails are distributed to users' computers (for example, as PST files) or stored in individual or shared mailboxes on the email server. It is also possible for a company to have its emails archived directly at the moment they are sent or received (known as a daily log). Even if the cloud platform fails, the archive remains accessible, thereby preventing a full-scale business interruption. In the aftermath of such an incident, even if emails cannot be recovered from the cloud service, they can still be accessed and recovered via the archive. Preserving email data over time may also help with regulatory compliance.
Transition of Affected Customers to Microsoft 365
Following the attack, Rackspace has begun moving affected customers to Microsoft 365 to ensure the availability of email services. So far, thousands of customers and tens of thousands of users have been migrated to Microsoft 365. If you're considering migrating yourself to Microsoft 365, a professional email archiving solution can also be an important helper here. Click here to find all the information you need for migrating from Microsoft Exchange Server to Microsoft 365.
Conclusions from the Rackspace Ransomware Attack
The ransomware attack on Rackspace once again highlights the risk that emails are under during system failures. Clean backups are a minimum requirement. However, backups alone cannot guarantee the integrity of a company's entire email inventory, and here is where email archiving plays an additional role. An unplanned failure of a cloud provider's systems is likely to seriously impact a customer's business operations and result in additional potential consequences such as loss of reputation. In such situations, it is necessary to develop a cyber resilience strategy in advance. As part of this strategy, a professional email archiving solution can help ensure that a company's entire email inventory remains accessible even if the cloud platform fails, allowing business-related information to continue being used.
Source: Rackspace ransomware attack: How email archiving can help (mailstore.com)