StorageCraft, whose mission is to protect all
data and ensure its constant availability, today announced the second in a
series of findings from an independent global research study of over 700
companies in Australia, France, Germany, North America, and the U.K. on the
attitudes of IT decision-makers (ITDM) around data management. The findings
reveal a concerning disconnect between an organization's confidence and its
actual ability to recover from a ransomware attack. While 68% of respondents
believe they have a clear plan in place and could quickly recover from a
ransomware attack, nearly a quarter (23%) do not test their recovery plans. Of
those that do test, nearly half (46%) only test their recovery plans once a
year or less.
Further highlighting the difference between the perception and reality of
being able to recover from a ransomware attack, the majority (86%) of
respondents confirmed they suffered data loss, with over a quarter (27%)
suffering data loss in the last six months. The research also uncovered issues
around the budget and complexity of IT infrastructure, which will add to the
challenge of ransomware preparedness.
- Nearly
half (46%) of respondents reported that they do not have the budget to
manage their data and recover from a failure adequately.
- Again,
nearly half (49%) of respondents reported they have between 3 and 5
different types of systems to manage and protect data. Thirty-three
percent have six or more different types of systems.
Said Shridar Subramanian, vice president of marketing and product management
at StorageCraft: "Even though ransomware continues to be a scourge on
business with a reported 118% increase of incidents in the first
quarter of this year alone, our research shows too many organizations are
ill-prepared to protect against it. We urge IT leaders in all organizations to
conduct a reality check to assess and test their ability to protect and recover
from a ransomware attack."
StorageCraft recommends that organizations assess and test their plans for
ransomware prevention, remediation, and recovery. First, businesses should
identify and locate their business-critical data and take comprehensive steps
to protect it. This step includes email security systems, firewalls, regular
software updates, clearly audited administrative and access policies, and
ongoing user education. However, prevention is not foolproof, which is why a
ransomware-specific plan for remediation and recovery is essential. Thwarting
ransomware is dependent on an organizations' data locality (i.e., on-premises,
in the cloud or in cloud-based applications such as G Suite and O365) and
preferred recovery location. Critical elements of a successful plan for
ransomware remediation and recovery include:
- Immutable Snapshots: To ensure unstructured data can be
recovered, companies should protect their information with continuous,
immutable snapshots. Data captured this way is 'frozen' and cannot be
overwritten or deleted by ransomware attackers. This ensures an organization
can revert to a secure set of data.
- Orchestration: A successful recovery process requires that
business-critical data and applications are prioritized. Companies using
cloud-based recovery should pre-determine the order in which their data and
applications will be recovered. This 'orchestration' ensures minimal downtime,
once data recovery begins.
- Immediate Recovery: Considering one minute of downtime costs $5,600
according to industry analyst firm Gartner, the speed of recovery
following a ransomware attack is a crucial element of the remediation and
recovery process. Solutions such as StorageCraft VirtualBoot provide the
ability to recover virtual and physical infrastructures - and both structured
and unstructured data - instantly.
-
Failback: After a successful cloud-based recovery, the
last step in remediating a ransomware infection is returning the data
infrastructure to its original location and resuming operations as usual. The
planned failback process should have a minimal impact on production
applications to minimize any additional downtime and adverse effect on the
business.