Businesses are losing the battle when it comes to defending against ransomware attacks, according to the Veeam 2022 Ransomware Trends Report, which found that 72% of organizations had partial or complete attacks on their backup repositories, dramatically impacting the ability to recover data without paying the ransom. Veeam found that 80% of successful attacks targeted known vulnerabilities — reinforcing the importance of patching and upgrading software. Almost all attackers attempted to destroy backup repositories to disable the victim’s ability to recover without paying the ransom. The report reveals the results of an independent research firm that surveyed 1,000 IT leaders whose organizations had been successfully attacked by ransomware at least once during the past 12 months, making it one of the largest reports of its kind. The first of its kind study examines the key learnings from these incidents, their impact on IT environments and the steps taken to implement Modern Data Protection strategies that ensure business continuity moving forward. The research project specifically surveyed four IT personas (CISOs, Security Professionals, Backup Administrators and IT Operations) to understand cyber-preparedness alignment across organizations. Ransomware has democratized data theft and requires a collaborative doubling down from organizations across every industry to maximize their ability to remediate and recover without paying the ransom. Experts say paying cybercriminals to restore data is not a data protection strategy. There is no guarantee of recovering data, the risks of reputational damage and loss of customer confidence are high, and most importantly, this feeds a self-fulfilling prophecy that rewards criminal activity.

The survey further says that, the majority (76%) of cyber-victims paid the ransom to end an attack and recover data. Unfortunately, while 52% paid the ransom and were able to recover data, 24% paid the ransom but were still not able .