Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Arcserve Study Reveals Retailers Underprepared for Holiday Cyber Attacks

Retail Ransomware: 26% of ransomware attacks caused data loss, a quarter of companies paid ransom, but few test or update recovery plans

DRAPER, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Arcserve, the world's most experienced provider of backup, recovery, and immutable storage solutions for unified data resilience against ransomware and disasters, today released a segment from its annual independent global research during Cybersecurity Awareness Month that highlights an urgent need for enhanced data resilience in the retail sector. The results reveal a lack of preparedness and confidence in data backup and recovery strategies, raising concerns about the industry's readiness to protect sensitive customer and business data.

Key survey insights include:

• Ransomware Pressures: 54% of retail executives disclosed they were targeted by ransomware in the past 12 months; 26% of the attacks resulted in compromised data, and a quarter confirmed paying ransom.
• Recovery Confidence: 66% of retail executives surveyed were not very confident in their ability to recover all lost data in the event of a ransomware attack.
• Partial Data Recovery: Nearly half (42%) of retail executives admitted being unable to recover all data during their last significant data loss incident.
• Unprepared for disaster: 57% reported they lack well-documented or updated disaster recovery plans. The vast majority (72%) revealed that they do not have specific data resilience goals within their data and backup strategies.

Aftab Alam, Chief Product Officer at Arcserve, states: "As we head into the Cybersecurity Awareness Month and the holiday shopping season that follows, retailers can't afford to be caught off guard. Our latest research is more than a cautionary tale; it's a call to action. Retailers must urgently overhaul their disaster recovery plans to match the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. Data resilience isn't a 'nice-to-have'; it's a non-negotiable business requirement with clear, measurable objectives. And don't wait for a crisis to test your recovery protocols; make it a regular practice, akin to a fire drill. By taking these steps, retailers do more than protect their bottom line - they retain the trust of their customers."

Arcserve recommends three immediate steps for retail organizations to be better prepared:

1. Review and Update Disaster Recovery Plans: Assess the robustness of data recovery strategies and ensure they align with the evolving threat landscape.
2. Invest in Data Resilience: Define specific data resilience goals within data and backup strategies to minimize potential losses.
3. Test Recovery Procedures: The wrong time to test disaster recovery plans is during a crisis. Test them now to ensure seamless and orchestrated recovery when it matters most.

About the research conducted by Dimensional Research: 1,121 IT decision-makers completed the survey. All participants had a budget or technical decision-making responsibility for data management, data protection, and storage solutions at a company with 100 - 2,500 employees and at least 5 TB of data. The survey was fielded in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada (North America).

About Arcserve

Arcserve, a top 5 data protection vendor and unified data resilience platform provider, offers the broadest set of best-in-class solutions to manage, protect, and recover all data workloads, from SMB to enterprise, regardless of location or complexity. Arcserve solutions eliminate complexity while bringing best-in-class, cost-effective, agile, and massively scalable data protection, and certainty across all data environments. This includes on-prem, off-prem (including DRaaS, BaaS, and Cloud-to-Cloud), hyper-converged, and edge infrastructures. The company's four decades of award-winning IP, plus a continuous focus on innovation, means that partners and customers, including MSPs, VARs, LARs, and end-users, are assured of the fastest route to next-generation data workloads and infrastructures. A 100% channel-centric organization, Arcserve has a presence in over 150 countries, with 19,000 channel partners helping to protect 235,000 customers' critical data assets. Explore more at arcserve.com and follow @Arcserve on Twitter.