By Chris Norton, Regional Director for Africa at Veeam
Cyber threats impact businesses of all sizes and across industry sectors. According to the Veeam 2022 Data Protection Trends Report, almost 9 in 10 South African companies have experienced a ransomware attack in the last 12 months. Across the continent, 71% of EMEA organisations suffered ransomware attacks, making cyber-attacks one of the single biggest causes of downtime for the second consecutive year. More significantly, 80% of organisations were unable to recover at least some of the data they had lost. Safeguarding client data in this challenging environment must therefore become a business priority.
The reality is that IT departments are constantly managing a trade-off between convenience and security. The Veeam 2022 Data Protection Trends Report further indicates that 86% of EMEA organisations have a protection gap between how much data they can afford to lose and on average, 16% of organisations’ data is left completely unprotected. It is the old adage ‘do you want it right now, or do you want it right?’ While businesses are understandably keen to prioritise investing in digital strategies that deliver competitive advantage, having an insurance policy against data breaches is always critical.
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Decision-makers need to be aware that there is no silver bullet when it comes to protecting against cyber threats. Cybercriminals are well versed in exploiting weaknesses in enterprise IT systems. It only takes one vulnerable entry-point to expose a company to crippling cyberattacks.
Local business leaders must sit up and take notice: data breaches are no longer an issue that exists within a company itself – they sit at the board level as well. Moving forward, business leaders should expect increasing momentum toward ensuring the right cybersecurity measures are in place. The Veeam report highlights how 78% of companies were unable to recover at least some of the data they had lost. Considering that the cost of a ransomware attack can amount to almost R7-million per incident, with $18-billion paid globally in ransom in 2020 alone, the problem is not going away.
Operational changes
Leadership needs to consider the following three elements when shoring up their organisational defences.
Leadership spotlight
Beyond these operational measures, companies must also look at what they can do at a leadership level to improve the data security of their client data.
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Taking ownership
While businesses can outsource data management to cloud service providers (CSPs), they can never outsource responsibility for their data. This is where Modern Data Protection comes in. IT departments must embrace Modern Data Protection and ensure all data is backed up, recoverable, and secure across their entire data management provision
One of the best ways to manage this is through a data protection strategy that follows the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. Companies must maintain at least three copies of their data, on two different media, with at least one copy stored at an offsite location, one copy offline, and all backups being verified containing no errors.
Today, it seems being breached by a ransomware attack is an inevitability. However, this does not have to cost the business significant portions of its profits. With the right cybersecurity infrastructure and training in place, local companies can sufficiently prepare and defend themselves against the dangers of ransomware and other cyber threats in the digital world.
With over 25 years’s experience in the IT sector, Christ Norton has a wealth of experience working in digitally-driven businesses. Norton joined Veeam as Country Manager of Africa in May 2021. Prior to that, he was the Regional Sales Director at Dell Technologies for four years. He has also held various senior leadership roles at ServiceNow, VMware, Citrix and Workgroup Distribution.