Plan B has published statistics showing that 44 percent of all customer disaster recovery invocations in the last 12 months have been to deal with ransomware attacks; and 87 percent of these have been within the past six months.
“We’ve noticed a real upsurge in customers utilising their disaster recovery service to restore data files and machines to overcome ransomware attacks. In the past six months, in particular, there has been a high prevalence. We work with mid-market organizations that have strong security measures in place, yet they are still falling victim” says Ian Daly, director at Plan B Disaster Recovery.
Ransomware attacks don’t just impact victims by encrypting individual files. If they attack Microsoft active directory domain controllers for example, they can spread across the network, causing more damage and encrypting more files. In such a scenario, entire machines will need to be restored, not just data files.
“Backup is really important for every organization to have, and can help protect against some cases of ransomware, but in the cases we have seen with our customers, backup either hasn’t been enough or recovery of data simply hasn’t worked”, says Daly. “If you do need to restore whole machines then a backup won’t offer you an adequate solution.”
