For many of us, remote work has become the “new normal” in a post COVID world. But unfortunately working from home has become a gateway to new forms of data theft. Remote workers are being targeted as the “weak link” in many corporate environments and cyber-criminals have found new and creative paths to hit organizations through their remote workforces, including the use of new tech such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and 5G.
A current Gartner survey asked companies about the post-pandemic work life. Gartner found that 47% of companies offer the option of full-time remote work. The survey also found that 82% offer hybrid employment conditions with at least one day each week on a from-home basis.
Remote work is opening the doors to ransomware on the “national stage”
The well-known Colonial Pipeline attack, which shut down systems that supply 45% of the eastern United States’ fuel has now been connected to the breach of a virtual private network, commonly used by remote employees to connect to a company system. And although a spokesperson for Colonial Pipeline said the VPN that was compromised was an older model, experts reinforce that any time an employee works offsite using their own networks, risks are involved.
There have been numerous documented attacks on organizations carried out through VPN access since the start of the pandemic including Japanese game developer Capcom and a European industrial firm.
What’s even more staggering is that according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, it was revealed that the average data breach cost increased by over $1 million whenever remote work was a casual factor. And, to add fuel to the fire, it took organizations with a remote workforce 58 days longer to identify and contain the breach compared to office-based organizations.
As the cost of data loss, downtime, and ransoms continue to rise, the stakes have never been greater to get ransomware protection right no matter where your workforce resides. Is your remote work force unwillingly unlocking the doors for cyber-criminals to attack?
Regular RTO testing can lower your overall TCO for ALL your work environments
In the recently held webinar titled “A Practical Guide to Ransomware: Recovery with HYCU and Wasabi”, Drew Schlussel, Sr. Director, Technical Product Marketing at Wasabi, and Marko Ljubanovic, Director, Global Systems Engineering at HYCU, discuss how testing procedures can help you effectively manage your IT spend and lower your overall TCO for ALL your work environments, including remote offices.
Specifically, Schlussel and Ljubanovic take a deeper dive into how setting regular recovery time objectives (RTO) policies can monitor what’s being backed up to ensure compliance.
“Then there’s also avoiding paying exorbitant ransom fees just to get your own data back,” noted Schlussel. “Put your RTO to the test regularly to ensure you’re in-house, hybrid, and remote workforce is well-practiced [in restoring systems/configurations/data] in case of an attack.”
Working together, HYCU and Wasabi can help significantly lower the TCO while protecting you against the inevitable ransomware attack without breaking the bank. Wasabi’s storage costs up to 80% (or 1/5th) less than the other cloud storage providers with no complex tiering and no fees for egress or API requests. And when you need to recover, HYCU is there to ensure you get your data back quickly and your applications working.
5-key questions every organization should ask
Ransomware is still on the rise, and recent forecasts predict that it is not going away anytime soon.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Is your remote working staff safe?
- Is your corporate data protected?
- Are you prepared?
- Do you have the proper testing procedures in place to effectively manage your IT spending?
- How can your organization improve ransomware protection for ALL your environments while lowering overall TCO?
If you answered “no” to any of these five questions above or if you simply don’t know the answers, it might be time for you to reevaluate your ransomware readiness strategy.
Stay tuned . . .
We recognize the need to simplify data protection and provide equivalent levels of backup and recovery support across on-premises, public cloud and SaaS workloads. And we’re just getting started.
Still have questions or want to learn more about how the Wasabi/HYCU partnership can help your organization be better prepared for a ransomware attack?
Stay tuned for part 4 of this series where we will look at “how to ensure immediate recovery without delay after a ransomware attack.”
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