NAS is increasingly popular with small/medium-size businesses because it’s cheap, holds your precious data, and doesn’t bring down your business with a single crash. However, Network Attached Storage has its vulnerabilities, which can be exploited by hackers using ransomware. With ransomware on the rise, it’s essential to have defenses in place to protect your data from unauthorized modification or deletion.
AES 256-bit encryption will ensure that no one can access your data even if the hard drive is damaged or stolen.
Ransomware is a HUGE problem in 2021
Ransomware is a huge problem plaguing users and administrators around the world. Ransomware has landed some big names, including The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ford Motor Company, and the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Combat this scourge with a layer of data encryption using 256-bit AES encryption on your enterprise NAS storage.
Understanding encryption and how it works
To put it simply, Encryption is scrambling information one bit at a time. The goal is to make it impossible for anyone to unscramble it. Encryption works by replacing each bit of the original information with a string of ones and zeros that, when rearranged, exactly reproduce the data. What’s more, to decode the data, someone must have the key. The more complex the key, the more unlikely is it to be hacked.
AES 256-bit encryption
AES 256-bit encryption is used for server-to-server Encryption using unbreakable, military-grade Encryption. It’s the level of Encryption used by the world’s most innovative companies in banking, eCommerce, insurance, and more.
AES 256-bit encryption is the highest standard used for securing files. It’s a method of encrypting files so nobody can read them without a key, even if somebody attempts brute force attacks. AES 256-bit encryption works by running a file through a series of complicated mathematical operations and a key that only the sender and recipient know.
Physically tampering with an encrypted drive will not reveal any data because doing so changes the hash value of the drive, which the decryption process compares to a stored value and will discard as invalid.
If you are interested, learn more about how AES 256-bit encryption works and check out the best NAS systems by Stonefly that support this Encryption by default.
Bottom Line
The only disadvantage of encrypting your hard drive is performance; Encryption takes time and resources, which will slow down your system. Depending on the size of your hard drive, this slowdown may be negligible or noticeable enough when decrypting your files. Regardless, if you have a huge data center, encrypting your data is a must.
