FUTURE TECHNOLOGY
Veeam Ransomware Trends Report , most businesses take at least three weeks to recover from a ransomware attack . It is important to note that this recovery time starts after the company has triaged .
This investigative stage can be extensive , and its impact on recovery timelines is hard to predict and overstate . At this stage , the business needs to identify the source of the attack and the extent of the damage , and they may even face yellow tape if government bodies need to drive the investigation .
During this time , the business is still compromised . In the worst-case scenario , it might have been forced to cease operations entirely while the breach is investigated and resolved . It goes without saying , but it is not making money if a business is not operating . Worse than this , costs are spiralling as it is resource-intensive to recover from a large-scale attack , with IT departments and key stakeholders working round the clock , and there are legal fees and compensation costs to account for , as well as reputational damage .
Getting hit by a ransomware attack is almost inevitable , with 85 % of organisations experiencing at least one cyber-attack in 2022 .
It is hard to predict how long a recovery process will take because ransomware is a disaster with a difference . Suppose you are recovering from a natural disaster like a fire . In that case , you can trust your last known backups or replicas and use them to begin recovery immediately , safely knowing that the backups have not been interfered with .
This is not the case with a cyber disaster , which considerably lengthens recovery time . It takes time to identify which servers are infected and to determine whether backups and replicas are also affected , if they are , they can reintroduce the ransomware to your infrastructure , sending you right back to square one .
However , while ransomware is a severe threat and can potentially cause widespread damage , there are measures businesses can take to reduce the recovery time and the extent to which they can be compromised . As mentioned , the golden 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule is a critical tool in your arsenal . While ransomware attacks are inevitable and backups increasingly targeted , by implementing a robust data backup strategy , you always have a clean copy of your data to fall back on . •
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