(Newswire.net — July 20, 2023) — In April 2023, one of the most devastating cyber attacks on Oregon municipal servers was reported by officials in Curry County. The incident involved a ransomware attack perpetrated by the Royal cybercrime group, which is believed to cooperate with Russian state-sponsored hackers. The servers used by Curry County were crippled by the attack, which attracted the attention of Homeland Security investigators and FBI agents.
Getting the Curry County IT infrastructure back online took several weeks. A mid-June report broadcast by Jefferson Public Radio featured an interview with Commissioner Brad Alcorn, who explained that restoring the network took much longer than expected because of the intensity of the attack and the inadequacy of its data backup procedures. Along with the business interruption, Commissioner Alcorn admitted that some data was lost because it resided in workstations that had not been included on the list of endpoints the backup system handled.
Among the many lessons to be learned about the Curry County ransomware attack, one of the most important deals with the way data backup procedures are configured across organizations. There is no question that the current dominance of ransomware attacks in the cyber threat environment is a significant reason to ensure that every business computer should be part of a business data backup routine. Here are three other reasons:
1- Disaster Recovery
Ransomware attacks are examples of man-made disasters. Floods, storms, earthquakes, and fires are natural disasters that can even more damage than what hackers are capable of. When your office workstations and endpoints are damaged by natural disasters, data loss is pretty much guaranteed, but having your business data backed up in a safe location will ensure that you can recover it when the network is repaired or replaced. When drafting a disaster recovery plan for your business, a data backup and restore system should be at the top of the list.
2- Human Error or Malicious Intervention
Employees can accidentally delete files corrupt files, or they may accidentally make changes they shouldn’t make in the first place. In some cases, technical issues related to improper or erroneous operations can cause data corruption. There is also the issue of data theft by rogue employees and contractors; this was the case in the Uber data breach scandal of 2016. Malicious intent by disgruntled employees or infiltrated hacktivists may result in permanent loss of data through cyber vandalism. Should any of these situations arise, having a backup of your data will allow you to restore it to a previous point.
3- Hardware Failure
This happens more often than most business owners realize, and it is not limited to catastrophic failure. Even a power surge that impacts the flow of voltage can cause the data stored on a computer or network to become corrupted. This is usually because the surge can cause hardware components to overheat or malfunction, thus increasing the risk of data corruption or total loss.
According to information security researchers, 60% of ransomware attacks are successfully mitigated with backup recovery. The remaining 40% were forced to pay the ransom or otherwise deal with the business loss even if they had a data backup routine in place; the problem is that they had failed to test the integrity of the data restoration process.