Ransomware attacks were a major cybersecurity threat in 2023
Cybersecurity and recovery, particularly from ransomware attacks, will be key areas of concern for major enterprises over the coming year. Last year, our survey of 300 IT decision makers found that 94% see cybersecurity as top of mind and 85% agree that cyber disaster recovery is a major priority that needs more investment.
With most organizations experiencing an increase in technology service disruptions or outages over the previous 12 months, 56% of respondents ranked cyber threats such as ransomware as the leading contributing factor to their disruptions. A Veeam survey confirmed that 85% of organizations had at least one ransomware attack last year and this trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
87% of respondents to the Cutover survey said that it takes longer to fully recover from a cyber attack now than one to two years ago, and this is particularly true for ransomware attacks - the average duration of downtime after a ransomware attack is nearly three weeks.
How are attitudes to ransomware attacks changing?
Last year, due to increasing ransomware threats, an alliance of 40 countries agreed not to pay ransomware criminals. This was likely due not only to the need to remove an incentive for cyber attackers but also because paying the ransom doesn’t guarantee the recovery of all or even any data. One study of the outcomes for companies hit by a ransomware attack found that, of the businesses that paid the first ransom, just over half regained access to their data, four in 10 had to pay further ransoms before getting their data back, and 1% never regained their stolen information.
Whether or not major enterprises follow suit in pledging not to pay ransoms, they will need to find a way to ensure their backups survive a ransomware attack. They will also need to ensure a robust ransomware recovery plan is in place to get their systems back online with the right data in as little time as possible.
Evolving technology presents new ransomware attack threats and opportunities
New and evolving technologies such as AI will provide bad actors with more ways to quickly unleash more sophisticated and frequent ransomware attacks. However, it will also provide new ways for organizations to both prevent and recover from these attacks. For example, smarter signature-less and predictive threat detection can spot an attempted breach faster than existing prevention tools could. Despite the high likelihood of increased ransomware attacks over the coming year, the latest ever-evolving cyber threat prevention and recovery tools provide an opportunity to be more resilient than ever.
Protect your organization with robust ransomware recovery
There is also new technology available to improve ransomware recovery outcomes and recovery will be more important than ever as attacks increase and more organizations adopt the policy of not paying ransoms.
Cutover enables organizations to reduce their cyber recovery time by 50% with automated and executable runbooks. The Collaborative Automation platform takes the risk and cost out of cyber recovery operations by enabling better collaboration between teams and automation.