AI-Powered Ransomware: Why Backups Are Your Best Defense
Apart from all the benefits that artificial intelligence can offer, this technology significantly impacts the landscape of modern cyber threats and shapes cyber security trends. Cybercriminals are among the first to leverage the advanced capabilities of generative AI solutions to empower their tools and malware. Evolving and escalating AI-powered ransomware threats are a separate menace category deserving special attention.
In this post, we explain the evolution of ransomware and how AI empowers cybersecurity risks. Read on to discover why backups are the best solution to reinforce your IT infrastructure’s resilience to ransomware attacks, ensuring critical data availability and production continuity.
AI Ransomware: The Evolution of Current Cyber Threats
At a superficial glance, AI-powered ransomware remains regular ransomware. This malware infiltrates IT environments and encrypts the data it reaches. After that, the victim receives a demand for ransom payment in exchange for decryption keys to regain data access.
The hallmark is artificial intelligence embedded to provide ransomware with additional capabilities, hence increasing its sophistication. AI ransomware becomes more effective at every stage of the cyberattack, from reconnaissance to exfiltration.
Enhanced capabilities of AI-powered ransomware
Cybercriminals can also use AI in ways other than directly modifying their malware. To set up the context first, let’s take a quick look at the development of cyberthreats beyond the internal ransomware modules and code in general.
For example, AI solutions such as Large Language Models (LLM) or advanced deepfake content generators can simplify and amplify ransomware injection tactics that rely on human error and social engineering. These include spear phishing emails composed with AI assistance and the use of deepfakes for voice and face cloning during calls or video meetings.
Additionally, cybercriminals can use AI to analyze data and prepare attacks with unprecedented thoroughness. For instance, artificial intelligence tools enable hackers to quickly collect publicly available information about the target organization’s executives and staff members. Then, they can use the results to craft a specific, personalized phishing email to make their target click that malicious link and trigger a cyberattack.
However, the most dangerous enhancements are inside AI-powered ransomware. As for the new malware capabilities, the following points are worth highlighting:
- Elevated scanning and exploitation – AI ransomware can autonomously scan security perimeters of target infrastructures to reveal vulnerabilities. Then, it can pick precise tools to exploit the detected weaknesses. Human operators are unnecessary at this stage allowing ransomware to quickly spread across IT environments, scaling attacks and multiplying their impact.
- Advanced encryption techniques for data lockdown – With MLM (Machine Learning Models) integrated, AI-powered ransomware can understand the data types and available system resources inside the target environment. After analyzing this data, malware can modify encryption algorithms to complicate data decryption.
- Automated targeting for strategic impact – AI ransomware can prioritize specific targets for malicious encryption. For example, NLP (Natural Language Processing) tools enable ransomware to analyze and process texts in the documents and files it reaches. By doing this after infiltration and before execution, ransomware can use a surprise effect to guarantee a hit on the most sensitive data first.
- Adaptive evasion tactics – The combination of advanced scanning and self-adjustment capabilities helps ransomware perplex security solutions. Upon successful injection, empowered ransomware can stay aware of the protection measures applied by the target organization. Then, malware can appropriately modify its code and behavior to remain undetected while operating.
AI enhancements have already increased both the frequency and impact of ransomware attacks. In numbers:
- Q1 2024 recorded a 21% growth in ransomware incidents over Q1 2023.
- The average ransom demand per attack reached $2.73 million in 2024, which is about $1 million more than in 2023.
The actual situation might be even more severe, as organizations and individuals mostly don’t notify officials about ransomware incidents upon occurrence. For example, the FBI states that only about 20% of the Hive ransomware group victims reported issues to law enforcement.
Challenges in defending against AI-powered ransomware
Protecting IT environments from AI ransomware can be more challenging for several reasons.
First, traditional cybersecurity instruments are mostly reactive: an antivirus, for instance, can detect a potential threat and then involve IT specialists to take action. AI integrations make cyberattacks faster, deeply customized and more accurate. This leaves security experts little to no time to react before considerable damage is done.
In addition, malware detection itself becomes a challenge. With AI-powered ransomware capable of continuously morphing the code autonomously, early detection is not guaranteed. Daily, hourly and even minute-fast signature database updates are insufficient to keep up with this ever-evolving threat. Moreover, AI ransomware can mimic regular software behavior and track user presence upon injection, and then activate malicious encryption during off hours.
Growing precision, adaptability and automation of AI-empowered cyber threats make organizations look for security solutions with comparable capabilities. AI-driven cybersecurity strategies can help with vulnerability assessment and threat intelligence, user behavior analytics, incident response and protection automation, among other improvements. However, the shift towards AI-enhanced cyber protection can require significant resources and expertise that not every organization has.
The Importance of Backup in Combating AI-Powered Ransomware
AI-powered ransomware won’t stop evolving until it can bypass the latest protection systems. With hundreds of millions of ransomware attacks happening every year, a security failure resulting in data encryption for your organization is just a matter of time. When protection measures are ineffective and the data is already lost, the only solution to restore operations is a relevant backup.
You can use modern data protection solutions to create backups of your critical data, workloads or entire infrastructures. When the main site is down and ransomware has already encrypted the original data, backups can help you restore operations and ensure compliance without paying hackers for the decryption key.
However, a single and simple copy of data is insufficient, as cybercriminals target backups along with main systems. Nowadays, a backup is more than just an additional data copy, and backup workflows require thorough setup. Advanced backup solutions, such as NAKIVO Backup & Replication, have anti-ransomware capabilities and data management features to help you build a resilient backup system for your IT infrastructure.
Similar to regular ransomware, AI-powered ransomware has the purpose of data encryption and deletion. To prevent this malicious operation, modern data protection solutions enable you to set up immutability periods for backups. When your backups are immutable, they can’t be altered or tampered with. Ransomware encryption algorithms can’t be applied to data in immutable backups, which means that you can safely use your backup copies for recovery even after successful cyberattacks.
Backup tiering is another anti-ransomware approach in backup workflows. You can send backups to multiple locations and have a spare uninfected data copy at reach in any scenario. Modern solutions enable storing backups in different on-premise repositories or cloud storage, as well as applying hybrid approaches to keep up with the 3-2-1 backup rule.
Ransomware-Resilient Backup Strategy: Best Practices
Besides immutability and backup tiering, a backup strategy that would be resilient against AI ransomware and other cyber threats requires more adjustments. The final shape of your backup system depends on the amount of data to back up, your recovery objectives and available resources. Still, meeting certain guidelines can help make your backup strategy more effective.
Consider the following best practices:
Data prioritization
Most likely, you don’t need to back up every single file in your environment. Define the data and workloads that are critical for production, and create their backups first. When a cyberattack happens, the data from these backups is first to be restored as well.
Records subject to regulatory compliance (for example, credit card information or client personal data) also need special attention. Ensuring the availability of this data can help you avoid regulatory issues and severe compliance fines.
Regular and automated backup scheduling
The volume of data to protect and the complexity and size of production infrastructures can make manual backups obsolete. Setting up a backup schedule means enabling automated updates of your backup data. Define your recovery point objective (RPO) and configure schedules accordingly. This is how you always have relevant backups and are able to restore production with no critical data loss.
Additionally, scheduling can streamline data management across the environment. You need to configure scheduled workflows once, and then they can run automatically. IT specialists can then have more time to work on production tasks.
Testing backups to check recoverability
Having backups and recovery plans isn’t enough to ensure swift recovery after an AI-powered ransomware attack or any other emergency. The moment your data is already encrypted is the worst time to find out that your backups are unrecoverable. To avoid such scenarios, consider implementing regular backup testing.
Full-scale tests can help employees understand their actions and roles in mitigating IT disaster outcomes. AI ransomware won’t leave much time to react during the attack, and every second you save by conducting testing drills can be decisive. Modern data protection solutions enable recoverability tests that don’t impact production, so you can run them more frequently without reducing business performance.
Combining backup with real-time monitoring and AI detection tools
A regularly updated and properly enhanced backup is your main solution to stand against AI ransomware. However, this line of defense shouldn’t be the only one. The combination of backup with AI-driven protection tools can help you reduce cyber security risks.
Real-time monitoring solutions can highlight system resource consumption anomalies and unusual user activities. AI detection tools can help reveal AI-powered ransomware by constantly scanning the environment and network traffic to detect possible intrusions. You can use these and other tools to strengthen your IT infrastructure’s security posture and mitigate the outcomes even if a ransomware attack is successful.
Conclusion
AI-powered ransomware is shifting the trends in cyber security due to enhanced automation, exploitation, encryption and evasion capabilities, among other improvements. Traditional protection, detection and prevention systems are falling behind the fast-paced adaptations of malware. Relevant and ransomware-resilient backup strategies are the efficient solution to support production continuity after a cyberattack without paying the ransom.
