Ransomware attacks continue to incur high costs. The stakes are increasing as 35% of respondents report their organisations were asked to pay over $100,000 in ransom payments, and 20% asked to pay between $1 million to $10 million.
When asked about the confidence level in their IT team's ability to recover lost data in a ransomware attack, less than a quarter (23%) of those surveyed said they are very confident in their ability to recover lost data. Smaller businesses are even less confident – less than 20% are very confident in their ability to recover lost data in a ransomware attack.
The research revealed that ITDMs recognise the importance of continued investments to increase data resilience, as 92% said they are making additional investments to protect against ransomware attacks. The top areas of investment are:
● Security software: 64%
● Training and certification: 50%
● Managed services: 43%
A strong disaster recovery strategy and updated backup systems are critical as most ITDMs (58%) said they will rely on existing backups to restore operations as quickly as possible if a ransomware attack occurs. Only 35% of those surveyed have data backup and recovery in place for all remote employees, presenting a significant vulnerability in the event of a ransomware attack as the remote workforce and the hybrid work environment become the norm.
The survey also found that most ITDMs (81%) want governments to do more to help companies protect against ransomware, although they acknowledge limitations.
Said Florian Malecki, executive vice president, marketing at Arcserve: "As our annual survey confirmed, ransomware attacks continue to significantly disrupt business worldwide with staggering costs and the real threat of losing mission-critical data. IT decision-makers must review and modernize their IT security infrastructure by making data backup and recovery and immutable storage a cornerstone of their data resilience strategy to strengthen the entire environment." He continued: "Arcserve focuses on helping our customers achieve true data resilience with a Unified Data Protection approach of impenetrable and immutable best-in-class data protection solutions for data centres, cloud, and hybrid environments."