The use of multi-factor authentication, particularly when combined with encryption, is extremely effective in protecting sensitive files and storage from ransomware and data theft, even if the system’s AV is bypassed or user’s credentials are stolen. If backups were the panacea solution to ransomware, we wouldn’t be in the situation that we are all in today. Backups don’t prevent data theft and encrypted backups can be double encrypted unless protected with mfa or some other approach.

I purchased one of these when they first came out a few months ago and I have tried to get around the protection and can’t. Cigent’s use of multi-factor authentication protects sensitive files even if anti-virus software is bypassed. It is specifically designed for that use case as far as I can tell. Just my two cents!

The only thing I know which could truly protect against ransomware are backups or a kind of storage that does not let you delete old stuff (only append changes comparable to version control like git).