Traditional approaches to storage are no longer sustainable or cost-effective given constant, exponential growth in data volumes across all industries. With the arrival of the pandemic, the business world's rapid move to remote and hybrid work models heightened the need to transition from legacy, on-premises storage to a flexible and cost-saving cloud-first model. File sharing has also emerged as a key tool for enterprise growth in the post-pandemic era - end users need to share critical information assets and collaborate efficiently across boundaries.

As enterprises move forward with these massive changes, IT must simultaneously contend with the growing threat of ransomware. Enterprise IT leaders have to determine the best and most efficient way to protect their evolving organisations and critical file data in the age of ransomware.

RISKS IN A POST-PANDEMIC ECONOMY
Over the past few years, ransomware has morphed into the number one cyber-threat - and it is still growing rapidly, both in terms of number of incidents and capabilities. In fact, the frequency of attacks has grown from 1,000 per day in 2015 to one occurring every 11 seconds around the world - posing a daily risk to business IP and operations alike.

Ransomware attacks have been happening for years. Now, with cryptocurrencies making payment easy and millions of people working remotely, attackers are growing more brazen. An emerging tactic in 2021 is encrypting an organisation's files and threatening to publish the compromised information online if the ransom isn't paid on time. This audacity is paying off. Research suggests that average ransom demands are already five times higher in 2021 than last year and the size of pay-outs by companies has nearly doubled.

The attackers do not discriminate. Ransomware can disrupt any organisation, whether a private, public, or charitable one. And it doesn't matter if the target is a well-resourced corporation or a small voluntary body getting by with basic IT systems. Attackers are bringing every type of organisation's operations to a grinding halt.

CHALLENGES OVERCOME
The standard approach to addressing ransomware that targets file servers is broken; traditional enterprise backup and recovery solutions do not work well for files because the process of copying files from backup takes way too long. The alternative comes from an unsung part of the cloud toolset: cloud-based file storage systems that allow companies to guard against attacks and set ground-breaking Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) for as little as five minutes. Anonymised data indicates that organisations with modern cloud file storage systems can avoid paying ransoms despite attacks, with most returning to full productivity in under 24 hours.

New cloud services deliver this level of protection and secure global file sharing in the same platform, providing up to five times faster file synchronisation across global locations, while offering rapid ransomware recovery that can restore a million files in under one minute. The cloud is not only the ideal infrastructure for our newly distributed workforces - it also delivers an unprecedented level of protection against ransomware.

In other words, it's not all bad news. With the right cloud toolset and resources in place, organisations can flourish in the post-pandemic era and gain a competitive advantage in a global economy consistently being disrupted by devastating malware attacks.

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