The Storage Manager’s Quick-Guide to Ransomware Resiliency

Part 1: Why Storage Managers Need to Prepare for the Ransomware Scourge

Certain parts of the enterprise are more concerned about ransomware than others. The security, networking, and help desk teams are very much in tune with the threat that ransomware poses on a daily basis.

Storage managers, however, don’t tend to pay as much attention based on the belief that their systems lie at the backend and don’t pose the same level of risk as other layers of IT. Research from Continuity, however, makes it clear that this is not the case. Any enterprise storage device has 15 vulnerabilities / security misconfigurations on average. 3 can be considered high or critical risk. Therefore, it is vitally important that storage managers understand the magnitude of the ransomware menace and what they need to do about it.

Let’s begin with a few facts about ransomware. An Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) study found that cybersecurity has replaced cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) as the top area for IT spending. With almost two-thirds of organizations intending to increase IT spending this year, 69% said they are spending more on security this year compared to last. Only 2% said they will pay less for cybersecurity in 2022 compared to 2021.

According to the study, 54% of respondents said the main driver of technology spending was the achievement of stronger cybersecurity and improved resiliency against cyberattacks. Why?

ESG discovered that 48% had been the victim of at least one successful ransomware attack. Two thirds of those attacked had paid a ransom to recover access to their data, applications, and systems.

Despite all the attention given to digital transformation, the transition to the cloud, and the need to deploy analytics and AI to extract real-time insights from organizational data, 22% of businesses named ransomware protection as their top business priority. Another 46% named it among their top five priorities.

These finding are corroborated by another research study by Arcserve and Dimension Research. It found that 50% of organizations worldwide had been targeted by ransomware. These attacks are continuing at a high frequency, yet most organizations are unprepared.

The…