At the excellent Dynamics GP Tech 2017 Conference this week, I heard a few interesting stories about ransomware at Dynamics GP customers.
One partner told me a very interesting story about ransomware at a customer that encrypted everything, including the customer's Dynamics GP database backups. The Dynamics GP partner was called in and he assessed the catastrophe. Nothing was recoverable.
But he noticed something strange. Dynamics GP was still working. He logged into the SQL Server, and he saw that the Dynamics GP databases were still intact and were not encrypted. He speculated that because SQL Server tenaciously locks the MDF and LDF files, the ransomware was apparently unable to encrypt the live database files.
He was able to stop the SQL Service, quickly copy all of the database files, and attach them on a clean SQL Server. Luckily, that copy process worked and the ransomware was either inactive at that point, or it didn't have time to encrypt the unlocked database files. In hindsight, I think I would probably first try doing full backups of all of the databases to ensure the MDF and LDF files remained locked, but saving the backup files to a clean location that can't be accessed by the ransomware would probably still be tricky.
Next, during her "Microsoft Azure: Infrastructure, Disaster Recovery, and Backups", Windi Epperson shared some harrowing stories about tornadoes in Oklahoma.
Some of Windi's customers have had entire buildings vaporized by a tornado, so even the best on-site backup would have been insufficient. Windi discussed the Azure Backup service, which I didn't even know about, as a flexible and economical way to get all types of backups off site. She also demonstrated the Dynamics GP backup to Azure feature that she recommends for small customers who don't have the IT staff to handle off site backups.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/backup/
I currently have a lot of my data backed up on Backblaze S2 storage through my Synology NAS device, but that is only through a connected sync process, and is not a true archive backup. I've been looking for a more traditional disconnected off site backup storage service that is reasonably priced, so I'm going to look into Azure backup and see if I can setup a process that can automatically backup what I need.
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in
Los Angeles. He is the owner of Precipio Services, which provides
Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.
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