Data Recovery Digest

The reported number of malware and ransomware attacks continues to rise – and that doesn't even count for those that we don't hear about. According to a recent report by Arcserve, which scrutinized the general attitudes of IT experts throughout the industry, many organizations still have significant weaknesses that threaten to undermine their entire business objective.

Arcserve's report highlighted numerous areas of note, including the need for hands-on involvement by business leaders, the need for greater access to data recovery software and hardware, and the importance of testing data backups and archives before an emergency takes place.

Per the report, 27% of respondents don't even include remote or branch offices in their normal data backup and recovery strategies. Moreover, 23% don't test out their data backups once they have been created.

All the Way to the White House

These data recovery problems have become so commonplace that even the White House is taking notice. Under President Joe Biden, the United States has recently pledged to improve their country's cybersecurity via an Executive Order issued directly from the President of the United States.

Biden's Executive Order focuses on several key areas that need improvement. This includes removing barriers when sharing threat information between governmental agencies, modernization of cybersecurity and data storage standards, optimizing the software supply chain, and improving investigatory processes.

Tom Signorello, Arcserve's CEO, shared his take on the matter in a recent press release by saying: ''"We wholeheartedly applaud the White House initiative to improve the nation's cybersecurity, and in encouraging private enterprise to take more proactive steps to protect themselves from cyber-attacks better. While awareness of the devastation caused by ransomware has grown due to recent attacks on critical infrastructure and the nation's energy and food supply, many organization's cybersecurity postures are not as robust as they should be. Protection of data from ransomware needs to be a top agenda item for executives across America. Organizations of all sizes urgently need to develop, evaluate and implement robust data protection plans."''

How to Improve

Arcserve's report didn't simply highlight troublesome areas. It went on to offer some helpful guidance that centers on prevention and remediation. During the initial phase, organizations should do everything they can to prevent issues like malware, ransomware, or unexpected data loss from occurring in the first place. This includes firewall and antivirus protection, employee education, and a comprehensive data backup strategy.

In the remediation phase, organizations that have already been affected will benefit tremendously from maintaining recent data snapshots of any critical information. Moreover, it's important that you act as quickly as possible if you need to recover lost data after an attack. In order for this to happen, your entire organization has to be on the same page when it comes to disaster recovery and continuity planning.

Whether or not the White House will follow these specific steps remains to be seen, but at least they're aware of the problem at hand. Although there's still a lot of ground to cover before the United States' data is fully protected, this is, at the very least, a step in the right direction.