Ransomware attacks continue to be top-of-mind for business and IT leaders. And for good reason. Ransomware compromises access to your organization’s lifeblood—data. Consequences can be dire: Pay perpetrators to (maybe) unencrypt your data, stumble with decryption tools, or gamble on recovering from backups. With millions of dollars spent annually to guard entry points to data, many still underestimate the strategic value of augmenting data protection. But your existing data protection may not be enough. Backups safeguard critical data against common scenarios such as recovering from natural or man-made disasters, data corruption, or accidental deletions. But ransomware attacks can stress existing dataprotection infrastructure that may be built on legacy architectures— such as disk and tape—more than expected. First, if you’re already struggling with meeting recovery SLAs, a ransomware attack can exacerbate the situation with additional downtime. Second, ransomware can compromise your backup systems and data, which could require you to reinstall and reconfigure your backup solution before you even contemplate data recovery.
