How long would your business survive in the event of a data disaster? A week? More? … Less?
What about essential services—infrastructure, medical care, supply chains, finance, government, education, retail? Our growing reliance on data makes us vulnerable to every threat—whether it’s natural disaster, hardware failure, human error, or cybercrime.
And, unfortunately, when it comes to cybercrime, even the best protection is no guarantee that you won’t become the next victim. With the power of AI and machine learning at their disposal, all it takes is one opening—one mistake, one gap overlooked—and a hacker has slipped through your defenses. Mention Solar Winds or Colonial Pipeline in a room full of IT professionals and watch them all wince at the thought that these two most devastating ransomware attacks in history were both caused by an employee password vulnerability that was exploited by hackers.
What if?
Strengthening your defences simply isn’t enough, on its own, to keep your data safe. It’s often said that when disaster strikes, it’s what happens next that matters most—and that’s where having a comprehensive data recovery or business continuity plan can mean the difference between living to fight another day or going under for good. It’s better to ask yourself, “What if?” and prepare for the worst than to rely on protection alone.
After all, sticking your head in the sand to avoid a threat is a fine strategy—if you’re a large flightless bird. If you’re a business looking to protect valuable data…not so much. And yet, far too many businesses take this approach—relying on being seen as too small or insignificant to attract the attention of a serious threat actor. Others adopt the “good-enough-is-good-enough” approach to data protection, which is almost worse because they acknowledge they’re vulnerable but don’t devote the resources needed to build a robust solution.
Smart businesses plan to both protect their systems and data—and recover them as quickly as possible if the worst happens. With industry-leading backup and disaster recovery services, ThinkOn can take you from “What if” to “What’s next” without missing a beat.
Yes, you should back it up—but let’s be smart about it
Imagine for a moment that you’ve been hit by a ransomware attack and you’re locked out of your data—customer records, employee personal information, financial records, archives, intellectual property—gone. Now imagine the fallout. The damage to your brand, the financial losses, the potential legal exposure. You should have backed it all up, right?
Well, yes. But also, no.
Let’s (pardon the pun) back up a bit.
Once upon a time, we just backed everything up—like randomly shoving everything, regardless of use, into a closet and leaning against the mostly closed door. But in today’s data-driven world, we have new ways of storing different kinds of data—technology that allows us to optimize economy and retrieval speed. When it comes to long-term storage and low-risk infrastructure with RTO and RPO[1] of days and weeks, you need Backup as a Service (BaaS)—like ThinkOn’s Data Protect powered by Veeam.
When every second counts
But when it comes to critical applications like e-commerce, system state, and security, or high change rate workloads, every second counts—the average cost of downtime is estimated at a stunning $1,467 per minute[i]. You need this type of data to be constantly updated, and when disaster strikes you need it to be available in seconds. ThinkOn’s Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) with Zerto is the gold standard of data recovery, providing near instantaneous RTO/RPO.
Together, BaaS and DRaaS provide robust disaster recovery for all your data needs, with no-nonsense billing, no escalating cloud allocation use charges and no fees—ingress, egress, or otherwise. Plus, our solutions are backup software agnostic and scalable, allowing your disaster recovery plan to grow and adapt to your changing needs. With ThinkOn, you can face ransomware head on and keep moving forward, with the right disaster recovery plan for your data at a cost that fits your budget.
The more you know
In the time it’s taken you to read this blog, seven new strains of malware have been created [ii], seven businesses have suffered a ransomware attack [iii], and $7,335 has been lost due to downtime [iv]. As businesses continue to embrace digitalization, it’s critical that they’re prepared for a ransomware attack—and for what comes next.
To better understand the ransomware threat and how to manage it, our team of Thinkers recently took a deep dive into the world of ransomware and returned with a fascinating look at the evolution and impact of the ransomware industry. Visit www.thinkon.com/ransomware-ebook today to download your copy of Ransomware & You: The Thinker’s Guide to Comprehensive Ransomware Protection, and learn more about how ThinkOn can help your data thrive!
[i] https://www.comparitech.com/data-recovery-software/disaster-recovery-data-loss-statistics/
[ii] https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2023/05/new-malware-born-every-minute
[iii] https://www.comparitech.com/data-recovery-software/disaster-recovery-data-loss-statistics/
[iv] Ibid.
[1] RTO/RPO—recovery time objective and recovery point objective: measures of recovery speed and data loss tolerance.