Most ANZ organisations would pay ransom: survey

Tuesday, 04 July 2023 10:54

Most ANZ organisations would pay ransom: survey

Cohesity Australia and New Zealand managing director Michael Alp

A survey conducted for data security and management specialist Cohesity has found 78% of respondents say their organisation would pay up in response to a ransomware attack if it thought this would allow the recovery of data and business processes, or if the payment would result in faster recovery.

The ransomware situation seems to be getting worse, with 94% saying they felt the threat of ransomware attacks to their industry had increased in 2023, and 56% revealing their organisation had suffered a ransomware attack in the prior six months.

It is perhaps unsurprising that 79% expressed concern about their organisation's cyber resilience strategy.

When it comes to recovering from a ransomware attack, 99% of respondents said it would take more than 24 hours, with 80% predicting at least four days, and 47% expecting the job to take more than a week.

Even than, 71% did not have full confidence that their company could recover its data and critical business processes after a system-wide cyberattack.

Anticipated problems include a lack of coordination between IT and security (33%), a lack of timely and detailed alerts (32%), and lack of a recent, clean, immutable copy of data (30%).

On the subject of data protection, only 47% were confident all their data stored in the cloud was secure and protected, dropping to 38% for edge data and 17% for data stored on-premises.

"Organisations cannot afford to be offline and unable to maintain operations, especially for more than a day. However, the stark reality is that many organisations are vulnerable to leverage from cyber criminals because they are incapable of rapidly recovering their data and business processes when necessary," said Cohesity Australia and New Zealand managing director Michael Alp.

"Therefore, it's no surprise that less than 5% of respondents said their organisation would not consider paying a ransom to maintain business continuity and that the vast majority of respondents believe their organisation would pay cyber criminals a ransom."

To deal with the situation, 88% of respondents want data and cybersecurity vendors to collaborate to provide complete and integrated anti-ransomware solutions, and 91% feel their organisation would benefit from a data security and management platform that provides insights on their overall security posture and cyber resilience.

When it comes to insurance against such attacks, 75% said their organisation was covered, but 48% said it is harder to obtain cover than it was in 2020.

According to respondents, the three technologies or capabilities most likely to be a requirement for cyber insurance are: strong encryption, multi-factor authentication, and the ability to verify the integrity of backups.

"IT and SecOps must co-own organisations' cyber resilience outcomes to identify sensitive data and protect, detect, respond, and recover from cyberattacks," said Alp.

"Relying on traditional backup and recovery systems, which lack modern data security capabilities, in today's sophisticated cyber threat landscape is a recipe for disaster. Instead, organisations should seek out data security and management platforms that integrate with their existing cybersecurity solutions and provide visibility into their security posture and improve cyber resilience."

509 IT and SecOps decision-makers (in roughly equal numbers, with 402 in Australia and 107 in New Zealand) were surveyed by Censuswide in late April 2023. The most represented industries were IT and telecom, finance, and education. The work was commissioned by Cohesity, Tenable, and BigID.

Cohesity's Global 2023 State of Data Security & Management Report will be released in late July.

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