May 26, 2020 Zerto Research: Organizations Vulnerable to Cyberattacks

Research results show organizations are not backing up their data or testing backups frequently enough to properly protect themselves.

Today, Zerto, a leader in IT resilience and disaster recovery solutions, published research that shows a significant number of organizations do not back up their data or test their business 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.

Businesses Concerned with Cyberattackers but Not Taking Enough Action

• 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.
• Looking further into the findings, 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.

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.

Vulnerabilities Stem from Infrequent Testing

• Two in five 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.
• Sixty-four percent of end-users only test their BC/DR scenarios and recoverability on an annual or quarterly basis. This lack of testing means 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. 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.

“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.”

To learn more about how customers are using Zerto to better recover from ransomware and help their IT Resilience, sign up for Virtual ZertoCON 2020 on June 10, 2020 https://www.zerto.com/zertocon/.

RSA Floor Show 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.

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