Vulnerabilities in Ransomware and Data Recovery Preparedness

Arcserve, Inc. released a segment from its annual independent global research.

The segment focuses on government IT departments’ approach and experience with ransomware and data recovery preparedness. The findings reveal several weaknesses that can hamper government departments’ fight vs. ransomware and their ability to recover data.

Key findings include:
• 36% of government IT departments do not have a documented DR plan.
• Only 38% of government IT departments have a comprehensive BC plan. that includes recovery, interim solutions, and communication.
• 24% of remote government workers are not equipped with backup and recovery solutions.
• 45% of government IT departments mistakenly believe it is not their responsibility to recover data and applications in public clouds.
• 33% of government organizations require over a day to recover from severe data loss, despite 82% reporting that less than one day is an acceptable level of downtime for critical systems.
• Only 34% are very confident in their IT team’s ability to recover all lost data in the event of a ransomware attack.

Said Patrick Tournoy, EVP of operations, Arcserve, “It’s like opening yourself up to a one-two knock-out punch. Gaps in protecting remote workers and cloud-based apps and data create an ideal hunting ground for bad actors and ransomware, while not having documented and tested recovery plans leave an organization more vulnerable and poorly equipped to recover data.”

The company urges government IT departments to prioritize data protection and rapid recovery by following 3 key steps: develop and regularly test a DR plan, implement the advanced 3-2-1-1 backup strategy to guard vs. ransomware, and utilize immutable storage to prevent data alteration.

About the research conducted by Dimensional Research: 1,121 IT decision-makers completed the survey. All participants had a budget or technical decision-making responsibility for data management, data protection, and storage solutions at a company with 100-2,500 employees and at least 5TB of data. The survey was fielded in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, the UK, USA, and Canada.