The State of Ransomware 2021

With ransomware and malware attacks making headlines recently, including the local incident with Scripps and the potential national security threat with Colonial Oil, we’ve experienced a heightened level of concern among our customers. We’ve had many clients reach out to inquire how they can protect their organizations from similar threats. While we don't have all of the specifics around either of these attacks, we can provide guidance on how to mitigate impacts resulting from ransomware, malware, hacking and other cybersecurity breaches.

The fact that we are witnessing successful attacks on organizations that are highly regulated, security-focused, and considered critical infrastructure illustrates that every organization is vulnerable. Ensuring recoverability of data, applications, and critical systems is the best hedge against a crippling attack.

I want to share with you how we've counseled customers who've reached out looking for long- and short-term strategies.

• Review or conduct a business impact analysis (BIA). This starts with tabletop discussions with department leaders to identify and understand the criticality of various systems. Consider being locked out of email servers, scheduling applications, customer or patient records, payroll, customer or patient portals, accounts payable, ERP, e-commerce, and other systems and assess how that will impact the business.
• Prevailing industry research says that on average after an attack, organizations take 21 days to fully restore systems and data. Assessing the criticality of systems and data is imperative. Building a strategy to test and ensure that you can recover them is essential. Confirm that there are routine processes in place to validate the ability and timeline to restore.
• The costs of proactive planning to minimize the effects of a ransomware attack are lower, by far, than the cost of falling victim to one. Even if you don't end up paying ransom, there are potentially huge costs for teams of internal and external specialists working around the clock to bring your data and systems back online. Additionally, there is the high potential of lost revenue, customers migrating to competitors, diminished trust and loyalty, compliance issues, inability to process payroll or to pay vendors, and so much more.

What measures can you put in place immediately?

Every CEO, COO, and CFO seeing these high-profile companies and others in the news is asking the same question, "are we protected?".

One thing that we often find missing when working with customers on their existing disaster recovery strategies is an immutable, or air-gapped, copy of backup. Immutable storage is impervious to ransomware because malware can't be altered when stored through this process. If you don’t have this second copy in immutable storage, ransomware can infect your production and backup datasets, leaving you completely vulnerable.

The most cost-effective, immediate defense against a crippling ransomware attack is your clean, immutable backup, which can be quickly restored.

Contact Andrew Cohen at ATEL Technologies - acohen@atelcommunications.com 858-646-4605

We offer a free Network Security Review to the first 20 customers who mention this email or use the Code: Backup 2021

You have received this email because you provided your email address to ATEL Technologies, most likely in the course of a business activity. If you do not want to receive any more mailings, unsubscribe.