Another large Ransomware attack this month forced an Indiana hospital to pay four Bitcoins, or $55,000. This is unfortunately an increasingly common story, but this one has a twist – they had backups of their data but still chose to pay. Why? Restoring their backups could have taken weeks, and it would have been too expensive to be closed for so long.
This hospital learned two lessons the hard way. They learned not only that employee training is vital to preventing Ransomware and other hacks, but also how critical it is to test your disaster recovery plans. Backups are extremely important, but like any medicine, you want to prevent the illness before you have to use it; and like any treatment, they are of limited value if there is no plan to implement them in a reasonable amount of time.
Business Continuity plans for dealing with common hiccups, and Disaster Recovery plans for major outages are two sides of the same data safety coin, collectively known as “BC/DR.” When a hacker attacks, or the power goes out your employees should know how to respond to minimize negative impact. Backups are one piece of that puzzle, but the written plans are essential to implementation.
We here at TechGen want to help keep your data safe and your business running StressFree. That’s why we do regular testing of your backups. We ensure your backup works, so when the worst happens, your technology will be ready. Because backups are just one piece, we’re helping our clients implement a BC/DR plan or improve their existing one. Please, let us know if you are interested in discussing ways to improve your security. We also encourage you to read through some of the other posts on this blog that offer useful tips to prevent hackers from getting on your network in the first place.
