Ransomware preparedness up but improvements still needed

Ninety-nine percent of IT and cybersecurity professionals across North America and western Europe reported that their organizations either had much or somewhat stronger ransomware preparedness, compared with two years ago but only 21% reported not being impacted by any ransomware attack during the previous year, TechRepublic reports. Most of the ransomware attacks happened less frequently than a monthly basis, a Zerto report revealed. Researchers also found that while 56% paid ransoms to facilitate attack recovery, only 14% were able to recover all compromised data. However, slight or significant ransomware preparedness investments are being planned by 82% of respondents in the coming 12 to 18 months. Moreover, network security systems, backup infrastructure, endpoint security tools, email security platforms, and data encryption technologies have been cited as the most crucial tools against ransomware attacks. Meanwhile, Zerto Vice President of Product Marketing Caroline Seymour said that increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks should prompt organizations to bolster their disaster recovery plans. "The goal of a DR solution is to ensure you can restore operations quickly to within seconds prior to an attack with the minimum amount of data loss and downtime," said Seymour.