Recently released research by Zerto shows that a significant number of organizations do not back up their data or test their businesses continuity/disaster recovery(BC/DR) capabilities with enough frequency. As such, businesses across the world are introducing the risk of disruption and data loss in a world expecting 24/7 availability.
This new research indicates businesses are concerned with an upsurge in criminal activity. With ransomware attacks on the rise, 56% of self-identified end users said they are re-evaluating their disaster recovery, backup and cyber resilience strategy and tools. Diving into the findings further, research showed that 62% said that they are still using traditional backup tools which poses an ever-present danger in recovery in the event of an attack. This comes at a time when replication technology, specifically Continuous Data Protection (CDP) can deliver point-in-time recoverability in a non-disruptive manner instead of backup copies burdening production environments.
Another major finding from this research indicates that protection gaps and infrequent testing led to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Approximately 40% of businesses stated that they back up their data every 12 hours or even less frequently—with 17% leaving a gap of more than 24 hours between backup copies creating potentially significant data loss in the event of an attack. Additionally, 64% of end-users only test their BC/DR scenarios and recoverability on an annual or quarterly basis.
“The combination of infrequent data backups and lapsed BC/DR capability testing within an organization is a cybercriminal’s dream,” explains Caroline Seymour, vice president, product marketing at Zerto. “If a company suffers a ransomware attack and cannot recover quickly, then the cybercriminal has full control of the situation. The company must either pay or accept that it is going to be offline for a significant amount of time. By contrast, if an organization has deployed a CDP solution, it can almost instantaneously recover to a point-in-time before the attack—and remove any leverage that cybercriminals may have.”
The IDC State of IT Resilience Report, also commissioned by Zerto, noted that companies pay a high financial and reputational cost for downtime caused by ransomware and other cyber threats. It reveals that 37% of respondents experienced a direct loss of revenue, 61% suffered damage to company reputation and 26% indicated a permanent loss of customers, reinforcing the need to find a solution that mitigates the risk and reduces the impact of downtime caused by cyberattacks.
This lack of testing shows that businesses are missing opportunities to reevaluate and adapt their BC/DR strategies so that they and their customers are protected from all types of disruptions and disasters. The use of frequent testing of BC/DR plans help ensure IT resilience and enables businesses to recover quickly if they fall victim to a cyberattack like ransomware.
ZertoCON Virtual 2020 will be held on June 10, 2020 and will dive deeper into how customers are using Zerto to better recover from ransomware and help augment their IT Resilience.
Survey Methodology:
Zerto surveyed 100 senior-level IT and security managers during RSA’s 2020 Conference to ascertain the impact of malware and the robustness of their cybersecurity defense strategies. The respondents represent a mix of service providers and end-users across a variety of business sectors.
