Cyber Resilience: Keep Your Business from Being Held Hostage by Ransomware
Not If, but When
The threat of ransomware attacks is nothing new: for years, these hostage-takers have been wreaking havoc on large and small businesses alike, encrypting vital data and costing millions in recovery and lost revenue. What may surprise you, however, is just how prevalent these attacks have become. In 2019, a survey of 500 IT professionals revealed that 84% of companies had fallen victim to a malicious ransomware attack. Of those attacks, 89% resulted in lost or corrupted company data. While these numbers are already staggering, the frequency of ransomware attacks is only projected to increase—as much as 300% by the end of this year alone. With alarming statistics like these, it is no longer a matter of if your company will be attacked, but when.
Things get even scarier when you look at the cost of these attacks. The total estimated cost of ransomware attacks for 2019 is $11.5 billion, with an average recovery cost of $1.4 million per attack for an individual organization. One such attack on Arizona Beverages earlier this year crippled the billion-dollar organization for almost a week, costing millions of dollars per day in lost sales in addition to the bad publicity and halted productivity. It’s clear: ransomware is not only growing more frequent, but more costly as well.
Given the growing inevitability of a ransomware attack, businesses can’t just rely on cyber-security measures to prevent attacks—the reality is that one will eventually get through. What businesses need is a way to mitigate the risk of damage to their data and operations, and the ability to bounce back unscathed once attacked. They can no longer settle for cyber security; they must become Cyber Resilient.
Cyber Resilience to the Rescue!
Cyber Resilience is the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a cyber-attack once it occurs. It requires a shift in the way we have thought about ransomware until now: from preventing attacks to being prepared for the eventuality of an attack. Becoming Cyber Resilient is a two-pronged effort. First, your business must develop a process and culture focused on resilience instead of mere prevention. Importantly, however, it must also have a recovery solution that can guarantee access to your data in the event of attack, getting your operation back up-and-running without a hitch. This is where Zerto can help.
With traditional snapshot-based recovery options, back-ups are usually taken every 24 hours at most. This leaves your company vulnerable to losing up to 24 hours’ worth of data in a single ransomware attack based on when it occurs. These recovery systems are also frequently bottlenecked by dated infrastructure and not large enough to handle complete Disaster Recovery if the scale of an attack is large enough. With Continuous Data Protection, however, these concerns can be a thing of the past.
By relying on Continuous Data Protection with Zerto, your company’s data is saved in intervals of seconds, not days, by recording data as it is changed rather than on a set schedule. Then, by utilizing Journal-Based recovery, you can rewind your servers and recover to any point in time—say, a few seconds before a ransomware attack occurred—and continue operations as if nothing had happened. With Zerto, your business can be well on its way to cyber resilience and face the growing threat of ransomware with confidence.
Visit our site to learn more about how Zerto can keep your business up-and-running in the event of a ransomware attack with Continuous Data Protection, and how our tools can help you pinpoint the time of attack and recover your data without losses.
