Only 16% of organisations recovered all data via attacker decryption tools after paying ransomware demand

Almost all IT and security leaders (96%) globally are concerned their organisation will be unable to maintain Business Continuity following a cyberattack, according to a new study released by Rubrik, a Zero Trust data security company. The State of Data Security by Rubrik Zero Labs: The Hard Truths of Data Security provides a unique view into the data security landscape, what IT and security leaders experienced and struggled with in 2022 and the actions and steps they are taking to establish real cyber-resilience.

Rubrik Zero Labs commissioned its second global study with Wakefield Research to gather insights from more than 1,600 IT and security leaders – half of which were CIOs and CISOs – across 10 countries. Supplemented by Rubrik telemetry, key findings of the report include:

Everyone is ‘doing’ data security, but reality and results vary:

• Data security is becoming increasingly complex and the datasets that require securing are growing rapidly. Rubrik internal data revealed that, on average, the growth of data secured in 2022 was 25% (on-premises grew 19%, cloud grew 61% and SaaS data secured grew 236% last year).
• More than half (56%) of organisations currently employ at least one Zero Trust initiative.
• However, only 56% of IT and security leaders developed or reviewed an incident response plan in 2022 and 54% tested backup and recovery options.

Legacy data backups, the last line of defence for many, are falling short:

• Almost all (99%) of external organisations reported having backup and recovery technology, with 93% encountering significant issues with their solution.
• Nine out of 10 external organisations reported malicious actors attempted to impact data backups during a cyberattack and 73% were at least partially successful in these attempts.
• Nearly three-quarters (72%) of organisations reported paying a ransomware demand.
• Only 16% of all global organisations recovered all of their data via attacker decryption tools.

New and constantly evolving problems are met with the existing challenges pre-dating an intrusion:

• Almost half (47%) of IT and security leaders believe their 2023 cybersecurity budget is not enough of an investment.
• Over a quarter (27%) expect their IT and cybersecurity budgets to decrease in 2023.
• IT and security leaders will need to work at bringing their teams together with only 4% stating there are no factors limiting the IT and security alignment requiring their attention this year.

“It’s clear organisations understand the gravity and impact of cyber incidents, but we also see a range of roadblocks from a lack of preparation, misalignment between IT and security teams and over-reliance on insufficient backup and recovery solutions,” said Steven Stone, Head of Rubrik Zero Labs. “In the current era of cybersecurity, the best outcome is ensuring cyber-resilience. Incidents are inevitable, so it’s critical to reduce the risk before a response is needed and – at all costs – protect the crown jewel: the data.”