Can Immutable Backups Be Deleted or Attacked by Ransomware?

Most organizations believe that having backups means they are protected from ransomware.
But in modern cyber incidents, backups are often the first systems attackers attempt to disable, encrypt, or delete.

This creates a dangerous false sense of security:
You only discover whether your backup strategy works when you actually need to recover.

That is why IT leaders are no longer just asking,
“Do we have backups?”
They are asking,
“Can we recover when the entire environment is compromised?”

This is where the distinction between immutable backup and air-gapped backup becomes critical.

When Ransomware Hits, Backups Become the Real Target

Today’s ransomware attacks are no longer limited to production systems.
Attackers actively target backup repositories, credentials, and recovery infrastructure to prevent restoration.

If backups are compromised during an attack, organizations face:

• Extended downtime
• Revenue loss
• Regulatory exposure
• Reputational damage
• Increased pressure from leadership and stakeholders

In many cases, the failure is not due to a lack of backups, but due to backups being accessible within the same environment as production systems.

What Is Immutable Backup?

Immutable backup refers to backup data that cannot be modified, encrypted, or deleted for a defined retention period.
Once written, the data is locked and protected from alteration — even by administrators.

Key Characteristics:

• Write-once, read-many (WORM) protection
• Protection against deletion or encryption
• Automated retention enforcement
• Strong defense against insider threats and malware

Business Outcome:

Immutable backups ensure that clean recovery points exist, even if attackers gain access to the backup system.

However, immutability alone does not fully eliminate risk if the backup environment itself is still accessible within the same network.

Weakness:

Immutable backups don’t protect the backup system from attacks that damage or destroy the backup database and catalogs. With the backup database, restoring would be impossible even if the data itself is immutable.

What Is Air-Gapped Backup?

Air-gapped backup takes protection a step further by isolating backup data from the production environment and network access.

This isolation can be physical, logical, or operational, ensuring that ransomware and unauthorized users cannot reach recovery data.

Key Characteristics:

• Complete isolation from production systems
• Restricted or zero network exposure
• Protection against credential compromise
• Defense against large-scale ransomware propagation

Business Outcome:

Air-gapped backups provide an additional layer of assurance that recovery data remains untouched even during a full-scale cyberattack.

Weakness:

Many airgap backup solutions simply open and close network connections without the ability to actively lock and secure the backup data when an attack is underway.

Immutable vs Air-Gapped Backup: Key Differences

Criteria	Immutable Backup	Air-Gapped Backup
Data Protection	Prevents modification and deletion	Prevents access and infection
Network Exposure	Still connected to environment	Isolated from production network
Ransomware Resilience	Strong	Very strong
Insider Threat Protection	Moderate to strong	Very strong
Recovery Assurance	High	Highest in worst-case scenarios

Why This Decision Is No Longer Just Technical

Backup architecture used to be an IT operational decision.
Today, it is a business resilience decision.

If recovery fails during a cyber incident, the consequences extend far beyond IT:

• Business operations halt
• Service-level agreements are breached
• Customer trust is impacted
• Leadership accountability increases
• Financial losses escalate with every hour of downtime

The uncomfortable reality is that many organizations validate their backup resilience only after an incident occurs.
By then, architectural gaps become operational failures.

The Question Leadership Is Really Asking

The real concern for CIOs and IT leaders is not:
“Are our backups running?”

It is:
“If our domain, credentials, and backup infrastructure are compromised, can we still recover the business?”

Immutability protects the integrity of backup data.
Air-gapped strategies protect the ability to recover in worst-case scenarios.

From a risk management perspective, recoverability — not just backup existence — is the true measure of cyber resilience.

When Should Organizations Use Immutable Backup?

Immutable backup is ideal when:

• Organizations want protection against accidental deletion and ransomware encryption
• Backup repositories are properly secured and monitored
• Compliance and retention requirements are a priority
• The threat model is moderate and controlled

For many organizations, immutability is a strong baseline defense.

When Should Organizations Consider Air-Gapped Backup?

Air-gapped backup becomes critical when:

• The organization operates in a high-risk industry (finance, healthcare, government)
• Regulatory compliance and audit readiness are required
• Ransomware risk is a major operational concern
• Backup infrastructure must remain recoverable even during a full environment compromise
• Leadership requires guaranteed recovery assurance

In these environments, isolation is not a luxury — it is a strategic safeguard.

Final Thought: Where Immutability Meets True Isolation

The real gap in many modern backup architectures is not storage — it is recoverability under attack.

Many backup platforms offer immutability.
Some offer strong security controls.
But few are designed to ensure full system rebuild and clean recovery when identity systems, credentials, and backup infrastructure are compromised simultaneously.

This is exactly the gap Arrosoft AirGap was built to address.

Arrosoft AirGap combines immutable backup protection with true isolation principles, ensuring that recovery data remains untouchable even during sophisticated ransomware incidents. Beyond protecting backup files, it safeguards critical backup components such as catalogs and metadata, enabling organizations to rebuild their backup environment and restore operations even after a severe cyberattack.

By operating within a segregated, zero-trust environment with separate credentials and MFA controls, AirGap ensures that protected backup data remains secure — even in scenarios where Active Directory or core infrastructure has been compromised.

The result is not just protected backups, but verifiable recovery assurance.

And in today’s threat landscape, that distinction is what separates organizations that recover in hours from those that spend weeks negotiating downtime, reputational damage, and operational disruption.