You've likely heard about ransomware and its dangers, but you may think a ransomware attack can't happen to your business. The fact is, any business - regardless of size or industry - can fall victim to a ransomware attack if proper protective measures aren't put in place.
The need to protect your business and your data from ransomware and its brutal effects is critical. As consultants, we talk about this with our clients and remind them of the value we can deliver to help protect against these attacks.
We often see clients relying on their internal IT staff or outsourcing their IT operations to a local firm to help them prevent against hacking, ransomware and other cyber/data breaches. It is crucial for any companies with a network environment to be extremely diligent about this due to the devastating impact it can have on your business operations and the ability for you to maintain customer satisfaction.
Real Life Example of a Ransomware Attack
Here’s an example of how ransomware can affect a company. Prior to switching to Vision33, our client worked with a local consulting firm that provided them with generic troubleshooting services (desktop troubleshooting, printer, email support, virus protection). Our client was under the assumption that they had received all the IT guidance and support to maintain their business operations and enable their growth. That was, until the day their environment was infected by a ransomware virus.
How Ransomware Affects Your Business Operations
In less than an hour, their entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, that was supported by three servers, was completely infected, rendering their entire operation useless. To make the situation worse, their database backup had not occurred in several months, and this led to:
- The inability to process orders via their ERP environment (some days they received over 500 orders)
- A loss of more than $5,000 in new orders daily because they could not process orders quickly
- Lost visibility of their inventory availability
- Lost visibility of their replenishment routines to get new inventory in for shipment
- Lost visibility of accounts receivables and payables
- A return to manual processes: paper, pen and many overhead hours were incurred to complete simple tasks
- A loss of all customer and order information from the time of the last backup to present day
- Untold revenue impact because it is not truly known exactly how much data was lost since the last backup
- A loss of all vendor information, open purchase orders, open invoices, etc.
The Cost of Ransomware Attacks
Not only was their business on the brink of disaster but the damages took a toll on their workforce and company finances. Their employees had to run their business manually which took them 600 man hours over a 6-day period. From a cost perspective, the owner estimated the damages cost his business more than $100,000, excluding the return business from customers that were lost because of the incident.
When the client reached out to Vision33, the business owner was in a state of significant distress as his business was severely broken. We helped them with a complete assessment of the damages and performed a complete system rebuild so they could get back to their regular business fast. To completely assess and implement a recovery program, it cost them approximately $32,000.
This could have been prevented.
Protecting Your Business Against Ransomware
There are things you can do to take control of in your business, including safeguarding your data in the cloud. It’s never too early to start thinking about how you could do things differently or how you can be better prepared for future events – whether a ransomware attack or even a natural disaster.
Vision33’s Cloud and Disaster Recovery team partners with businesses of all sizes and in all industries to put protective measures in place to minimize possible downtime. We have helped clients prevent data loss situations when disaster has struck. We love being part of these stories. But as you can see from this example, we’ve also rushed in to help clients recover from situations where they weren’t as prepared. We’ve worked together to help them recover and be ready to have a success story next time.
Learn More
Our “Customer Spotlight Snapshots” eBook features actual scenarios some of our customers experienced as a result of disaster. Read their stories to understand why preparation is key, and how Vision33 can help.
