Monday, March 09, 2020

Ransomware is the Number One Cause of Disaster Recovery (DR) Events

When ransomware infects a company's IT systems, it often leaves the target helpless and at the mercy of the attackers.  Stored and backup data become encrypted, and, as such, are irretrievable unless the attackers demands are met or the system can otherwise be restored from clean backups.  In response, the enterprise scrambles, often in vain, desperately trying to restore systems and data to a point prior to the attack. This disaster recovery process is often manual and time-consuming, resulting in costly downtime. In many cases, businesses (like a hospital, for instance) cannot function without their systems active, so they may feel added pressure to pay the criminals to decrypt their data more timely. It is truly a nightmare.
Ransomware Number One Cause of Disaster Recovery Events
Some shocking ransomware statistics:
  • Since 2016, Ransomware Growth: 700% – Gartner
  • Cost of Ransomware in 2019: $11.5 Billion – Fortinet
  • Companies that used their DR Plan in Past 24 Months: 80% – Gartner
  • Companies that did NOT Meet Their RTO and RPO Objectives: 94% – Gartner
The DRaaS Solution to Ransomware
PTS and its partners are ready to offer an elegant DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) solution. Backup and DR is simple with VMWare Cloud on AWS.  Backups are deduped and stored on S3 in a steady-state. Runbook automation instantly turns these backups into live VMs during a DR event. You get instant RTO for thousands of VMs. 

10x More Cost Effective. Fail over to on-demand VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC targets using ControlShift DR plans and store forever incremental, native backups in S3. DR sites are ready when needed, in the cloud, whether for testing or actual failover. Pay for SDDC only when you need it while your data is ready to use on low-cost AWS S3. Efficiently fail back with minimal AWS egress charges by transferring only changed and globally deduplicated data. Select from a broad range of DR sites around the world.

Instant RTO Restart from Recent Snapshots or Deep Backups on S3. Easily restart instantly from recent snapshots or backups that are months or years old. With converged backup and DR, you have millions of point-in-time consistent recovery points to choose from, so you can quickly restore your entire data center. That can be critical for ransomware attacks, which often only become apparent months after the initial event. Achieve instant RTO with zero copy and no rehydration as ESX hosts directly mount a live NFS datastore hosted in AWS.
“Developing and delivering transportation solutions requires highly available and secure IT systems even during disasters. Our DR solution had to have low RTO and the high reliability and security of a leading government service that could be audited, tested, and verified regularly. Datrium DRaaS met all our demanding requirements while reducing our TCO by 80%.”
- Michael Beerer
Senior Section Manager Information Systems
Orange County Transportation Authority

Contact PTS to discuss DRaaS options 
to better protect yourself against Ransomware.