AI-powered CIO lets you ask questions of the Veeam Ransomware Trends Report 2023

Last week Veeam released their Ransomware Trends report. If you have not seen these before it is a fantastic piece of research Veeam compiles. This year (as you will see in the transcript) it spans the globe with over 4200 respondents.

After writing a quick application in LangChain and this time using OpenAI models to do the heavy lifting, I prompted the AI with the following.

Act as if you are responding as a CIO. This person has some questions about the Veeam Ransomware Trends report for 2023, be concise with your answers to them: Question: {question}

All a bit of a fun, by the way you can download this report for FREE, here, https://go.veeam.com/wp-ransomware-trends-report-2023

Here is what it had to say…

Transcript

Who where the authors of this report? Answer: The authors of the 2023 Veeam trends report are Jason Buffington, VP, Market Strategy; Dave Russell, VP, Enterprise Strategy; and Julie Webb, Director, Market Research & Analysis.

How was this report data compiled? Answer: This report was compiled from data collected from 4,200 unbiased organizations across 28 countries, 1,700 unbiased respondents using at least one IaaS, SaaS or PaaS, and 800 orgs managing SFDC across US, EU and APJ. The data was analyzed by Jason Buffington, VP, Market Strategy, Dave Russell, VP, Enterprise Strategy, and Julie Webb, Director, Market Research & Analysis.

Have ransomware incidents increased over previous years? Answer: Yes, according to the 2023 Data Protection Trends Report, 85% of organizations suffered at least one cyber attack in the preceding twelve months; an increase from 76% experienced in the prior year.

Is it a good idea to pay the ransom? Answer: No, it is not a good idea to pay the ransom. The survey found that paying the ransom did not enable recovery in most cases. Additionally, organizations should focus on preventative measures such as creating an incident response playbook and storing immutable data.

How often are organisations being targetted by ransomware? Answer: According to the 2023 Data Protection Trends Report, 85% of organizations suffered at least one cyber attack in the preceding twelve months.

Are organisations being suffering attacks more than one time per year? Answer: Yes, according to the 2023 Data Protection Trends Report, 85% of organizations suffered at least one cyber attack in the preceding twelve months.

Tell me about insurance, should i get some? Answer: The Veeam 2023 Global Report on Ransomware Trends found that 37% of respondents were security professionals, 21% were CISO or other IT executive stakeholders, 21% were IT operations generalists, and 21% were backup administrators. The report found that respondents expected their cyber security (preventative) budgets to grow by 5.6% and their data protection (remediation) budgets to grow by 5.5% in 2023. The report did not address insurance specifically, so I don’t know if you should get some.

During an attack can you summarise how attackers affected backup data? Answer: According to the report, less than 25% of victims stated that their backup repositories were not affected by the attacker. To prevent this, organizations should employ immutable storage within disks and clouds, as well as air-gapped media, to ensure recoverable data.

What should I be recommending as next steps to mitigate against Ransomware attacks in my organisation? Answer: I would recommend implementing a comprehensive incident response playbook, aligning the cyber and backup teams, and storing immutable data in a secure location. Additionally, I would suggest investing in preventative measures such as cyber security budgets and backup solutions to ensure data is protected and always available.

Can Veeam help me recover from a ransomware attack? Answer: Yes, Veeam provides organizations with resiliency through data security, data recovery and data freedom for their hybrid cloud. The Veeam Data Platform delivers a single solution for Cloud, Virtual, Physical, SaaS and Kubernetes environments that give businesses peace of mind that their apps and data are protected and always available to keep their businesses running. For more information, visit www.veeam.com or follow Veeam on LinkedIn @veeam-software and Twitter @veeam. For questions on this research, reach out to StrategicResearch@veeam.com.

Break down the data around how long it takes organisations to recover from a ransomware incident. Answer: According to the 2023 Global Report: Ransomware Trends, the survey of 1,200 IT leaders found that it takes an average of 8 days to recover from a ransomware attack.

What are the challenges when restoring data from a ransomware attack? Answer: Restoring data from a ransomware attack can be challenging because organizations need to ensure that their data is recoverable and that they are not re-infected during the restore process. Organizations should employ immutable storage within disks and clouds, as well as air-gapped media, to ensure recoverable data, and should use staged restorations to prevent re-infection.

Does the duration of recovery typically last days, weeks or months before fully recovered? Answer: According to the 2023 Veeam Global Report on Ransomware Trends, it takes an average of 3+ weeks to recover from a ransomware attack.

When recovering data from an attack, where are people restoring to? Answer: Most organizations are restoring to cloud-hosted infrastructure or managed disaster recovery as-a-service (DRaaS) platforms, with 81% using a datacenter and 71% recovering to a cloud. Additionally, 82% are using immutable clouds, 64% are using immutable disks, and tape is still being used in 2023.

Is tape still being used as to form part of a data protection strategy? Answer: Yes, the Veeam 2023 Global Report on Ransomware Trends found that tape is still being used as part of a data protection strategy in 2023. The report found that 82% of organizations use immutable clouds, 64% use immutable disks, and tape still matters in 2023.

What percentage of organisations are using tape? Answer: 14% of organizations are using tape, according to the 2023 Veeam trends report.

What is the best alternative before paying the ransom? Answer: The best alternative to paying the ransom is to have a secure backup.