How can a magnetic tape, like the old cassette tape, save you from ‘ransomware’?

In recent years, it has been seen how some companies have decided to store their data in the cloud to promote hybrid work environments, even more so with the rise of teleworking due to the pandemic. However, the cloud is exposed to cyber attacks such as the popular ‘malware‘ ransom known as ‘ransomware‘.

To protect yourself from this risk, there are users who have migrated their data from hard drives, SD cards and pen drives to magnetic tapes. According to the Swedish firm Sweclockers, storage on this medium skyrocketed in 2021 and grew, compared to the data recorded in the previous year, by 35%.

This indicates that, despite the fact that they are a rudimentary medium, many users prefer them because they are cheaper and are not exposed to attacks such as ‘ransomware‘, because they are not connected to the internet.

“The ‘ransomware‘ and the ‘malware‘ are threats that will not go away. Magnetic tape is an established, understood and proven technology that can be an invaluable tool in beating the ‘ransomware‘”, explained the head of IDC analysis research, Phil Goodwin, in words collected by Sweclockers.

However, because they are physical storage media, magnetic tapes can be exposed to fire or flood. For this reason, they are being stored outside the company and there are companies specialized in their maintenance.

The innovation of magnetic tapes

The magnetic tapes are kept in a plastic box called a cartridge and they work like the old ones. cassettes. Its main difference from digital storage media is that they can only read data and write it sequentially and this cannot be done simultaneously.

It is what is currently known as Linear Tape-Open or LTO technology, which has been developed by technology manufacturers such as IBM, HP and Seagate/Quantum. With this technology, the magnetic tapes have a storage capacity of up to 45 terabytes (TB) of data.

During a visit by Portaltic to the IBM Research laboratory in Zurich (Switzerland), this company explained that the tape storage it proposes is an evolution of the technology known in videos VHS. The multinational highlighted advantages of its use, such as its affordable cost in relation to other technologies such as Flash or external storage disks.

He also highlighted his cyber resilienceenergy efficiency and its potential scalability, compared to hard disks (HDD, for its acronym in English).