Legacy technology undermines ransomware response

Almost half of respondents to a new survey say their company depends on outdated, legacy backup and recovery infrastructure to manage and protect their data. 46 percent are relying on primary backup and recovery infrastructure that was designed in, or before, 2010.

The study commissioned by Cohesity from Censuswide also finds 62 percent expressed some level of concern over whether their IT and security teams would be able to mobilize efficiently to respond to an attack.

"IT and security teams should raise the alarm bell if their organization continues to use antiquated technology to manage and secure their most critical digital asset -- their data," says Brian Spanswick, chief information security officer at Cohesity. "Cyber criminals are actively preying on this outdated infrastructure as they know it was not built for today's dispersed, multicloud environments, nor was it built to help companies protect and rapidly recover from sophisticated cyberattacks."

Enterprises are relying on legacy technology, despite the world having moved on. In the UK, 38 percent percent of respondents say that they store data on-premises, 39 percent rely on public cloud storage, 50 percent utilize a private cloud, and 41 percent have adopted a hybrid model (some respondents are using more than one option).

"In 2022, the fact that any organization is using technology to manage their data that was designed in the 1990s is frightening given that data can be compromised, exfiltrated, held hostage, and it can create massive compliance issues for organizations," adds Spanswick. "In this survey, we easily found respondents who said their organizations are relying on very outdated data infrastructure, and this raises the question, how many other businesses are in the same situation around the world?"

The study also highlights what respondents believe would be the biggest barriers to getting their organization back up and running after a successful ransomware attack. These include integration between IT and security systems (41 percent); lack of coordination between IT and Security (37 percent); lack of an automated disaster recovery system (34 percent); lack of and timely detailed alerts (31 percent); antiquated backup and recovery systems (29 percent) and lack of a recent, clean, immutable copy of data (24 percent).

You can find out more on the Cohesity site.

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