Confirmed: 44% of disaster recovery requirements are for ransomware

Confirmed: 44% of disaster recovery requirements are for ransomware

With the rise in the number of cyberattack incidents in 2017 Plan B, has announced that 44% of all customer disaster recovery utilisations in the last 12 months have been to deal with ransomware attacks. And furthermore, 87% of these have been within the past six months.

“We’ve noticed a real upsurge in customers utilising their disaster recovery service to restore data files and machines to overcome ransomware attacks. In the past six months in particular, there is a high prevalence. We work with mid-market organisations that have strong security measures in place, yet they are still falling victim,” said Ian Daly, Director at Plan B Disaster Recovery.

Ransomware attacks don’t just impact victims by encrypting individual files. If they attack Microsoft active directory domain controllers for example, they can spread across the network, causing more damage and encrypting more files. In such a scenario, entire machines will need to be restored, not just data files.

“Backup is really important for every organisation to have and can help protect against some cases of ransomware, but in the cases we have seen with our customers, backup either hasn’t been enough or recovery of data simply hasn’t worked,” said Daly. “If you do need to restore whole machines then a backup won’t offer you an adequate solution.”

Plan B is encouraging businesses to test their disaster recovery solutions more regularly following the recent BA failure. “The only way you can ensure your DR plan is going to work is to test it,” said Daly. “We test DR solutions every 24 hours for our customers as it’s the only way we can guarantee successful recoveries. We run over 350,000 test restores every year to offer customers a unique money-back guarantee of immediate recovery. Because IT systems are so dynamic and constantly changing, as an absolute minimum, companies should be testing their DR every three months.”

Click below to share this article

Browse our latest issue

Intelligent CIO Europe

View Magazine Archive