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 organisation can
revert to a secure set of data.
Orchestration: A successful recovery
process requires that business-critical data
and applications are prioritised. 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 US$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
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
INTELLIGENT
TECH CHANNELS
Issue 28
The most
successful
companies in the
digital economy
will be those that
implement storage
policies based not
on their server
hierarchy but the
value of their data.
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 minimise any additional downtime and adverse effect
on the business.
What are some of the key challenges organisations
face when it comes to data protection and how can
StorageCraft help address these?
A recent survey, commissioned by StorageCraft, discovered that
nearly 50% of IT decision makers are struggling with data growth
and believe it is only going to get worse. Further to this, 51% are
not confident that their IT infrastructures can perform instant data
recovery in the event of a failure. It’s clear that exponential data
growth and its safe storage is a challenge for organisations and an
area that businesses need additional support.
The findings also reveal a concerning disconnect between an
organisation’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 in
the past year, 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.
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