The recently published Cohesity Global Cyber Resilience Report 2024 has found that despite 98% of organizations having a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 24 hours, only 2% of organizations can achieve this after a ransomware incident.
According to over 3000 respondents to a survey conducted for the report:
- Only 2% said they could recover data and restore business processes within 24 hours of a successful ransomware attack.
- 18% said their company could recover data and restore business processes within 1-3 days.
- 32% said they could recover and restore in 4 to 6 days, while 31% would need 1-2 weeks.
- Almost 1 in 6 (16%) need over three weeks to recover data and restore business processes.
Despite this chasm between business continuity planning and the reality of ransomware attacks, 78% of survey respondents stated that they have confidence in their company’s cyber resilience strategy: a strange dichotomy.
Ransomware attackers are winning: the majority of organizations pay out
The survey found that only 6% of respondents said their company would not pay a ransom to recover data and restore business processes, or do so faster, with 83% saying they would. In fact, 75% of respondents globally said their company would be willing to pay over US$1 million in ransoms to recover data and restore business processes, and over 1 in 5 (22%) said their company would be willing to pay over US$5 million.
Concerningly, close to 7 in 10 (69%) respondents said their organization had paid a ransom in the last year, before being surveyed, despite 77% saying their company had a ‘do not pay’ policy. The more than 2100 respondents, who have paid a ransom, said they had paid out the following amounts in the past year:
- 37% have paid ransom(s) between US$1 – US$249,999
- 23% have paid ransom(s) between US$250,000 – US$499,999
- 23% have paid ransom(s) between US$500,000 – US$999,999
- 12% have paid ransom(s) between US$1,000,000 – US$2,999,999
- 6% have paid ransom(s) between US$3,000,000 – US$9,999,999
- 0.33% (7 respondents) have paid ransom(s) between US$10,000,000 – US$25,000,000.
Demographics
The findings are based on a survey of 3139 IT and security decision-makers (split as close to 50:50 as possible) commissioned by Cohesity and conducted by Censuswide in June and July 2024. The top five industries that respondents selected as best representing their company’s operations were IT & telecommunications, manufacturing, financial services (incl. insurance), banking & wealth management, and hospitals & healthcare. Respondents came from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
