Traditional data protection methods often fail to provide effective cyber resiliency. Here are 5 questions to ask to allay the impact of evolving ransomware variants.

When the Irish Health Care System (HSE)'s data was ransom attacked, 80% of their data became corrupted and unusable. In July, the city of Columbus experienced a ransomware attack that disrupted various municipal services, and months later, it is still working towards recovery.

Ransomware attacks are becoming more frequent and causing unprecedented chaos and financial distress.

Few organizations have been this transparent following a ransomware attack, but HSE and Columbus are far from alone. Following ransomware attacks, organizations rely on their data protection solution to recover and restore business operations as quickly as possible.

However, instead of providing a timely and confident recovery, the limitations of traditional data protection and storage solutions become exposed, and organizations are left paying the ransom, and even then, only 4% get all of their data back (Sophos, States of Ransomware, 2022).

This demonstrates how traditional data protection solutions fail to fully support cyber resiliency, despite having added "cyber" features to their products. Features like immutability, isolation, virus scanning, and multi-factor authentication are often easily integrated. Some vendors even rely on marketing hype, attempting to position themselves as security vendors rather than delivering real value.