Unbreakable by Design: CIS Control 10 and the Blueprint for Ransomware-Resilient Organizations
Cybersecurity leaders spend millions preventing attacks. The smartest ones invest just as heavily in surviving them.
That’s the core philosophy behind Center for Internet Security (CIS) Control 10: Data Recovery. It’s not about hope. It’s about engineering resilience.
If your backups can be deleted, encrypted, or silently corrupted, you don’t have a recovery strategy — you have a false sense of security.
Let’s break down how CIS Control 10 hardens a business at scale.
Assume Failure Is Inevitable
Ransomware, insider threats, cloud misconfigurations, hardware failures — none are rare anymore.
CIS Control 10 starts with one brutal truth:
Recovery capability is your last line of defense.
If an attacker gains domain admin in your environment, can they:
Delete your backups?
Encrypt your backup repository?
Disable replication?
Compromise your backup credentials?
If the answer is “maybe,” you’re exposed.
Apply the 3-2-1 Rule — Then Go Further
The Foundation:
3 copies of data
2 different media types
1 copy offsite
But at scale, that’s not enough.
Modern Best Practice:
Immutable storage (object lock / WORM)
Air-gapped or logically isolated backup repositories
Separate credentials and MFA for backup systems
Backup admin accounts not tied to Active Directory
Encrypted backup data at rest and in transit
Ransomware operators now target backup infrastructure first. If your backups sit on the same domain, same hypervisor cluster, and same credential set — they’re already compromised.
Protect the Backup System Like Production
One of the most common failures:
Organizations secure endpoints and servers… but leave backup appliances wide open.
CIS Control 10 emphasizes:
Hardening backup servers
Restricting management ports
Patching backup software
Limiting console access
Monitoring for backup deletion attempts
Logging backup job failures and anomalies
If your backup system isn’t monitored, it’s invisible until it fails.
Test Recovery — Don’t Just Hope It Works
Backups are only valuable if they restore successfully.
You should be:
Testing full restore procedures quarterly
Measuring Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Measuring Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Validating integrity of restored data
Documenting restore runbooks
Many organizations discover corrupted backups during a crisis. That’s a leadership failure, not a technical one.
Separate Roles and Enforce Least Privilege
Backup operators should not:
Have domain admin rights
Control hypervisor infrastructure
Share credentials with production admins
Implement:
MFA on backup consoles
Role-based access control
Separate break-glass accounts
Approval workflows for deletion
Segmentation isn’t optional anymore.
Cloud and SaaS Backups Matter Too
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce — these are not immune.
Cloud platforms operate on a shared responsibility model. Data deletion, ransomware sync, or malicious admin actions can permanently destroy data.
CIS Control 10 requires:
Backup of SaaS platforms
Retention policies beyond default recycle bins
Protection against ransomware encryption syncing
If your business lives in the cloud, your recovery plan must too.
Executive-Level Metrics That Matter
Security leaders should track:
Backup job success rate
Immutable retention coverage %
Time to detect backup tampering
Time to restore critical systems
Backup infrastructure MFA coverage
Resilience is measurable.
If it isn’t measured, it isn’t protected.
Why CIS Control 10 Is a Leadership Imperative
Ransomware is no longer a technical problem. It’s an operational survival problem.
CIS Control 10 transforms recovery from:
“We think we’re covered”
into
“We’ve engineered survivability.”
Prevention reduces risk.
Recovery guarantees continuity.
Organizations that scale securely understand this:
You don’t win by avoiding every attack.
You win by making attacks irrelevant.
