Why recovery readiness has become the new standard for cyber resilience

A new ransomware report says more than 90% of attacks try to delete or tamper with backups before any payload runs, and nearly 60% of those backup-targeting attacks succeed. The result is that outages are no longer only an IT issue: delayed recovery can halt business-critical operations, reduce productivity, and cause permanent customer losses. A key misconception is that backup equals recovery. While backups create duplicate copies of data, recovery is what restores business operations quickly enough to prevent extended downtime, lost revenue, and reputational damage.

The article argues attackers understand this gap better than many organizations, often tampering with backup repositories first. It also notes identity-based entry is now common, with about four in five ransomware attacks starting with identity approaches.