Every year, one of our key Backup & Disaster Recovery partners (Datto) conducts a survey to understand the state of security throughout North America. They inquire with 2400 Managed Service Providers (MSPs) on their findings through the year and how many of their clients have been impacted by illegal cybercrime. The findings are more eye-opening every year.
Many of our clients are part of peer groups who confer on their directions, goals and methodologies within their industries. ActiveCo is proud to be a leading part of their security strategy and understand the numbers below, and how these issues are impacting the flow of business in Canada, and around the world. No business it too small to be threatened and these annual reports help paint the picture that these attacks will only increase over time.
Some key findings:
– From Q2 2016 – Q2 2018 79 percent of MSPs report ransomware attacks against small-to-medium sized business (SMBs).
– In the first half of 2018 alone, 55 percent report attacks against clients.
– 92 percent of MSPs predict the number of ransomware attacks will continue at the current rates or become worse in the future.
– On average, MSPs report more than five attacks per client each year.
– However, only about 24 percent of those attacks are reported to authorities, which means the problem is likely bigger than we know and gets even more complicated for Canadian MSP’s and SMB’s and data security-related compliance legislation came into effect November 1st, 2018.
-MSPs rank BDR as the most effective for ransomware protection compared to other solutions such as training, patch management, and antivirus software.
Another key note is that MSPs are able to report that 94% of their clients who are impacted or threatened by a ransomware attack are able to recover their business and get back up and running within 24 hours. That is, if they have a proper Backup & Disaster Recovery Plan (BDR) in place.
You should know off the top of your head if your organization has a BDR in place, this would allow you to not only sleep at night, but to ensure business continuity in the case of any attack, disaster or simple human error that takes your business down unexpectedly.
Note that not every plan is perfect for every organisation. For example, a legal firm working on documentation constantly would certainly want to consider having backups frequently enough that data loss has as little impact as possible. Conversely, if a business has a less hectic documentation schedule, they may only need data backups performed a few times per day.
Do you know your business backup schedule? It’s important to understand your tolerance level for how much data you and your team are willing to lose (and you will lose some, at some point).
Discuss with your technology success partner what your current setup is, and if that works for you. If not, you’ll want to ensure they understand what you want to see from their services.
Don’t know how to start that conversation?
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