Paying a ransom does not guarantee successful decryption or recovery, and it does nothing to stop stolen data from being leaked if the attacker also exfiltrated it, a pattern CISA’s guidance calls double extortion. Verified, tested backup recovery remains the more reliable path in most cases. Acronis Cyber Protect combines the four capabilities above under one platform, specifically to shorten the interval between locating a clean restore point and bringing the workload back online, with no negotiation required.

Protect backup files by keeping at least one copy offline, air-gapped, or immutable, so ransomware executing on a compromised production system has no path to reach, modify, or delete it. Acronis Cyber Protect supports immutable storage for eligible backup locations and configurations, which helps keep retained recovery points resistant to modification or deletion even when the source system has already been compromised.

CISA’s preparation guidance recommends offline, encrypted backups tested regularly, with multi-cloud or immutable storage considered so a single compromised credential set cannot take down every copy at once. This is the logic behind the 3−2−1−1−0 rule: three copies of the data, on two different media, with one copy off-site, one copy offline or immutable, and zero errors on a verified restore.