Cyber insurance applications include a question that catches a lot of small business owners off guard: “Do you maintain immutable, air-gapped, or offline backups of your critical business data?”Carriers added that question to renewal forms because ransomware operators worked out that the fastest way to force a payout is to wipe the backups first and encrypt everything else after. CISA, the FBI, and the Internet Crime Complaint Center have all documented this pattern as one of the most common moves in current ransomware playbooks. A business whose backup copies can be deleted using the same admin credentials an attacker just stole has no recovery path other than paying the ransom.This post covers what immutable backup means, three common backup setups that do not qualify, the questions to send your IT provider before you sign the form, and what to do if your honest answer is no.Immutable backup, definedAn immutable backup
