Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Malware
  • /
  • Arcserve supports White House Cybersecurity Initiative, urges organisations to evaluate ransomware preparedn...

Arcserve supports White House Cybersecurity Initiative, urges organisations to evaluate ransomware preparedness

Independent research reveals vulnerability in many organisations' ransomware strategies.

Johannesburg, 11 Jun 2021

Arcserve Southern Africa has revealed that Arcserve – the world's most experienced data and ransomware protection provider – is supporting the White House Cybersecurity Initiative. In response to the recent Biden Administration Executive Order to improve the nation's cyber security and subsequent White House memo by Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor, Arcserve has shared findings of its independent research into experiences and attitudes of IT decision-makers around data protection.

The research exposes weaknesses in many organisations' ransomware strategies that could hamper their ability to recover from an attack. These weaknesses comprise a lack of leadership engagement in data recovery strategies, weak enterprise-wide data protection measures, incomplete data recovery plans and an absence of data recovery testing.

Research findings highlight the need for:

  • Greater involvement of business leaders in assessing data recovery capability. Only 8% of respondents said their CEO tracks metrics to ensure a robust data recovery plan. In comparison, 58% of CEOs only seek basic assurances that a data recovery plan is in place but do not request details.
  • Enhanced data recovery technologies. Over a third of respondents reported a data outage in the past 12 months, and over half were unable to recover all their data.
  • Holistic data recovery plans. Twenty-seven percent of respondents reported that remote and branch offices (ROBO) are not included in data recovery plans.
  • Battle test data recovery. Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents do not test data recovery plans.

Said Tom Signorello, CEO at Arcserve: "We wholeheartedly applaud the White House initiative to improve the nation's cyber security, 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 organisations' cyber security 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. Organisations of all sizes urgently need to develop, evaluate and implement robust data protection plans."

Arcserve advises organisations to step up their ransomware preparedness by assessing and testing their prevention and remediation processes. These steps are in direct alignment with the White House advice that business executives review their corporate security posture and business continuity plans to ensure the ability to continue or quickly restore operations.

Prevention – ensure critical systems and data are backed up using immutable backup technology. Continuous, immutable snapshots of data cannot be overwritten or deleted by ransomware attackers. In the event of a ransomware attack, immutable snapshots keep data protected and are completely immune to any modification or deletion.

Remediation  while immutable snapshots ensure an organisation can recover from an attack, the recovery speed is critical. Organisations need to evaluate and ensure they have a well-defined, rapid and orchestrated recovery plan in place. This includes data throughout the infrastructure, not only in the data centre. The ability to restore data from the known recovery point that was not impacted allows an organisation to return to normal operations in minutes without paying a ransom or losing data.

When implemented correctly and tested regularly, these straightforward steps can reliably protect data and thwart ransomware attacks for companies of all sizes and at a wide range of price points.

Arcserve provides the industry's broadest range of best-in-class data management, protection and recovery offerings for on-premises, off-premises, hyper-converged, cloud and edge data infrastructures. By leveraging Arcserve technologies – such as data protection, backup as a service (BaaS), disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), continuous data availability and immutable storage snapshots – organisations, regardless of their data size, complexity or location, have access to the most advanced, proactive and multi-layered strategies to neutralise ransomware attacks, mitigate risk in the event of a cyber attack and eliminate downtime relating to data recovery.

About the research: Dimensional Research conducted research with a total of 709 qualified respondents. All respondents had budget or technical decision-making responsibility for data management, data protection and storage solutions at a company with 100 - 2 500 employees. The survey was fielded in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States.

Share

Arcserve Southern Africa

Arcserve Southern Africa is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and is the sole sub-Saharan Africa representative of US global corporation, Arcserve, a leading provider of data protection and recovery software. Arcserve provides a comprehensive solution for virtual and physical environments, on premise or in the cloud, backed by unsurpassed support and expertise. Arcserve’s new unified architecture, Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP), drives a full range of highly efficient and integrated data protection capabilities through a simple, web-based user console.

Arcserve Southern Africa territories include: South Africa; Nigeria; East Africa and the South African Development Community (SADC).

For further information: www.arcserve.com

Editorial contacts

Deirdre Blain
Blain Communications
(+27) 83 230 5522
D@blaincomms.co.za
Byron Horn-Botha
Lead: Arcserve Southern Africa Channel and Partnerships
(+27) 11 417 8641
Byron.Horn-Botha@arcserve.com