Member Article

Survey shows that 2 out of 5 organisations have been hit by ransomware in past two years

Research from storage vendor Quantum and ESG Research, that queried hundreds of IT professionals and line-of-business leaders across North America, the UK and Asia-Pacific, shows that 2 out of 5 organisations have been hit by ransomware in past two years. Two out of five respondents reported that their organisation had been a victim of a successful ransomware attack in the last two years, with 82% of organisations defaulting to paying the ransom.

In addition to the cost of the ransom itself, attacks can have an impact on organisation productivity – the survey found that the median cost for ransoms was reported as $375K – which equates to the cost of approximately 2.1 hours of downtime for a mission-critical workload.

Out of those surveyed, 87% of respondents say their executives are concerned about future ransomware attacks and on the other hand, just 6% of organisations impacted could restore from an air-gapped backup solution.

Storing data longer can increase resiliency and empower data monetisation – 65% of our respondents say their organisation would be better equipped to recover from an attack if they were able to retain their data for longer.

An increase in enterprise security threats, coupled with concerns around data retainment, cost, data sprawl and cloud-based management models, as well as a lack of response strategy, points to an industry-wide need for more comprehensive and cost-effective data management solutions.

“The research we conducted for Quantum underscores the absolute need for enterprises to have a data management strategy in place—including storing, archiving, accessing and analysing the massive amounts of data these organisations generate,” said Scott Sinclair at ESG. “Without the right solutions and strategy in place, organisations are missing out on the potential value of this data and leaving themselves open to exorbitant costs and risks of ransomware and other cyberthreats.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Quantum .