There’s a quiet illusion still hanging around many boardrooms and IT teams.
It goes something like this: “We’ve got backups. We’re covered.”
That idea might’ve worked a decade ago. Today, it’s dangerous.
Ransomware doesn’t just go after your data. It goes after your ability to bounce back. It aims to disable, dismantle, and drain every layer of recovery before you even get a chance to react. And with Ransomware-as-a-Service lowering the barrier for entry, it’s no longer a question of if an attack lands, but how long you’ll be scrambling when it does.
Where Backups Used to Work and Why That’s Changed
Backups were once enough. You took regular snapshots, stored them offsite, tested a few times a year, and ticked the compliance box. It worked for accidents, hardware failures, and the occasional human error.
But ransomware doesn’t behave like a power outage or a corrupted file. It finds your backups. Alters them. Deletes them. Encrypts them. In many cases, the recovery system itself is the first target – especially if it’s located within the same infrastructure you’re trying to save.
For small and mid-sized businesses, the cost of a single day offline can be staggering. But even for larger organisations, the reputational damage, contractual breaches, and operational disruption far outweigh the comfort of “we’ll just restore from backup”.
Recovery Delays Aren’t Inconveniences. They’re Business Risks
There’s a tendency to treat recovery timelines as a technical matter.
That’s outdated thinking.
A three-day rebuild of your production systems might look acceptable in theory. But in reality, that could mean:
- Delayed payments to vendors
- Inaccessible platforms for your customers
- Operational paralysis across multiple business units
- Board members asking questions you can’t answer
Too many plans assume recovery will work just because it did once during testing. But ransomware doesn’t give you a clean environment. It gives you a mess. Recovery playbooks need to account for stress, chaos, and the fact that your team may be working with partial access and compromised trust in their own tools.
The Move From Backup to Resilience Isn’t a Buzzword Swap
Let’s clear something up.
Cyber resilience isn’t just “better backup”.
It’s an entirely different posture. It asks harder questions:
- Can you continue to operate while under attack?
- Are your backups truly untouchable or just stored in a different folder?
- Do your people know exactly what to restore, in what order, and under whose direction?
A resilient setup includes:
- Immutable backups stored offsite, disconnected from production credentials
- Automated, regular recovery testing, not just for files, but for full services
- Orchestrated playbooks that guide restoration across apps, networks, and users
- Clear visibility into recovery time and readiness, not vague assumptions
The goal is continuity, not clean-up.
Start Where the Impact Hurts Most
Technical debt always comes due at the worst time. And resilience gaps rarely show up until you’re knee-deep in one.
A smarter approach starts with understanding which systems matter most. Not every application is mission-critical. But your ERP, CRM, scheduling platforms, payment rails, and authentication layers probably are.
Do the work. Map your infrastructure to real business functions.
Ask:
- What grinds to a halt if this goes down for an hour?
- Who does it affect, and how fast?
- What does it cost you in reputation, contracts, or compliance?
You’re not protecting servers. You’re protecting trust.
Your Backups Deserve Their Own Defence Strategy
Treating backup infrastructure as secondary to production is a mistake.
Attackers know that. That’s why they target it first.
Your recovery systems should be walled off, locked down, and monitored with the same rigour as anything customer-facing. That includes:
- Unique admin credentials for backup environments
- MFA enforced across all backup consoles
- Early warning systems for unusual file behaviour
- Immutable storage that can’t be altered or deleted by compromised accounts
If your backups live in the same environment as your attackers, they’re already compromised.
Stop Assuming. Start Proving.
When was the last time you tested a full restore – from scratch – under pressure?
Unverified backups are a gamble. One that fails more often than most teams are willing to admit.
Build a cadence of automatic verification. Make full DR testing part of your monthly rhythm. Not just “can we restore the database?”, but “can we get the entire sales platform live, with the right permissions, in two hours?”
And then document it.
Resilience Is a Boardroom Conversation – Not a Niche IT Project
Insurers, auditors, and regulators are all asking the same things:
- Are your backups immutable?
- How often are they tested?
- Can you prove recovery times and integrity?
- Are your systems segmented in the event of a breach?
If the answers are fuzzy or undocumented, you’re leaving risk – and coverage – on the table. Worse, you’re giving the board a false sense of assurance.
Recovery readiness needs to be presented in business terms. Cost of downtime. Impact on SLAs. Compliance exposure.
Don’t tell them “our backups are fine”. Show them how recovery performs under pressure, with evidence.
The Time to Rethink Your Resilience Is Before It’s Tested
Backup isn’t going away. But treating it as the only line of defence is a habit the threat landscape no longer allows.
Cyber resilience is the ability to take a punch and keep operating. It’s preparation that works when the pressure is highest. And it’s what separates the organisations that bounce back from those that end up in headlines.
If you’re unsure how resilient your current setup really is, it’s time to have that conversation.
