Systems and methods for creation and retention of immutable snapshots to facilitate ransomware protection are provided. According to one embodiment, multiple use cases for retention of snapshots are supported, including (i) maintaining a locked snapshot on a source volume of a first storage system on which it was originally created for at least an associated immutable retention time; (ii) replicating the locked snapshot to a destination volume of a second storage system and also maintaining the replica of the locked snapshot on the destination volume for at least the associated immutable retention time; and (iii) maintaining an unlocked snapshot on the source volume, replicating the unlocked snapshot to the destination volume, locking the replicated snapshot on the destination volume when it has an associated non-zero immutable retention time, and thereafter maintaining the replica on the destination volume in accordance with the immutable retention time.