Zerto Wins Ransomware Protection Company of the Year at the 2017 Storage Awards

In a night filled with glitz and glamour at the The Grand Connaught Rooms in London earlier this month, Zerto became the proud recipients of the award for “Ransomware Protection Company of the Year” at the 14th annual ‘Storries’ – the 2017 Storage Awards!

Pete Godden, VP of EMEA Sales, was on hand to accept the award and had this to say;

“It’s an honour to be the first recipients of this award and a great reflection of the work that Zerto has done to help our customers remain confident and secure despite the increasing threat of cyber-attacks.”

2017 has already seen a number of high-profile ransomware attacks.  The most widely disruptive variant so far, WannaCry, infected over 300,000 computers in more than 150 countries within just a few days during May.

A little over a week ago, South Korean hosting firm Nayana revealed that they paid a staggering $1m ransom – after negotiation – to recover their critical data, following infection by the Erebus strain of ransomware.

Now this week, we’ve seen a large-scale attack by what appears to be yet another new strain of ransomware.  Designated ‘NotPetya’, after what initially seemed to be similarities to the code used in the Petya family which saw wide distribution last year, it is currently wreaking havoc across the UK, US and Russia in particular.

The use of ransomware as the cyber-criminals ‘malware-of-choice’ shows no sign of slowing either.

From 2015 to 2016, the number of ransomware attacks recorded rose from 3.8m to 638m – an incredible 167x increase.

– 2017 Sonicwall Annual Threat Report

In the first quarter of 2016, a business was attacked by ransomware every 2 minutes.  By the third quarter, this had tripled to one business every 40 seconds.

– Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2016

2017 is only continuing this trend, with more than 4x as many new ransomware variants seen in Q1 than in the same period last year.

– Proofpoint Q1 2017 Quarterly Threat Report

With such a prolific threat, it’s not so much a case of ‘if’, but ‘when’ it’s going to happen.  All organizations need to take multiple steps to combat the threat, such as end-point and network security (especially regarding remote access protocols) and of course, user training and education.

However, it is absolutely crucial to ensure there is robust protection of critical data, as with so many new variants of ransomware continually being created, inevitably something will get through – and when it does, the consequences can be disastrous.

72% of organizations lost access to their data for 2 days or more.

– Intermedia

But worse…

1 in 5 organizations that paid the ransom NEVER got their files back.

– Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2016

Ransomware doesn’t have to bring business to a halt though.  If you’re not already aware of how Zerto enables organizations to rewind and recover from ransomware in minutes, check out our webinar “Recovering from Ransomware in Minutes” and find out exactly why Zerto was awarded “Ransomware Protection Company of the Year”.

Read more about the current ‘NotPetya’ ransomware attack and how to prevent it here – https://virtuallyonit.com/2017/06/28/petrwrap-what-we-know-so-far/