Why cyber recovery is better then backups against ransomware

Key points:

• Cybersecurity experts say traditional backups alone are no longer sufficient against modern ransomware attacks.
• Attackers increasingly target backup infrastructure to prevent organisations from recovering their data.
• Cyber recovery focuses on restoring verified, uncompromised business services rather than simply recovering stored data.
• Experts recommend immutable storage, isolated recovery environments, regular testing and risk-based protection strategies.
• Wateen says its backup, disaster recovery and enterprise infrastructure solutions help organisations strengthen cyber resilience.

LAHORE – The rise of ransomware attacks has prompted cybersecurity experts to call for a shift from traditional backup strategies to comprehensive cyber recovery plans, warning that conventional backup systems are increasingly being targeted by attackers.

For decades, organisations have relied on backups as the primary method of protecting business data. However, cybersecurity professionals say threat actors now routinely compromise backup infrastructure alongside production systems, reducing the effectiveness of conventional recovery strategies during cyberattacks.

What do cybersecurity experts have to say?

Experts argue that while backups remain essential, they should no longer be viewed as a complete recovery solution. Instead, organisations should adopt cyber recovery frameworks that focus on restoring verified and uncompromised business services within an acceptable timeframe after an attack.

Unlike traditional backups, which primarily address data retention, cyber recovery is designed to ensure operational continuity under hostile conditions. The objective is not only to recover files but also to restore trusted systems that allow organisations to resume critical business operations.

According to cybersecurity specialists, an effective cyber recovery strategy should include immutable backup copies that cannot be modified or deleted, isolated recovery environments such as air-gapped infrastructure, and routine testing to verify that recovery processes function as expected.

What else do they recommend?

They also recommend prioritising protection for mission-critical systems rather than applying identical recovery policies across all data. This approach helps organisations reduce complexity while strengthening resilience where it matters most.

Experts further advise organisations to evaluate recovery performance using business-focused metrics such as Mean Time to Clean Recovery (MTCR) and Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD), alongside traditional recovery objectives.

What is going on with organisations?

Implementing these measures can be challenging in enterprise environments that depend on legacy infrastructure and complex operational processes. As a result, organisations are increasingly seeking technology partners capable of designing and deploying secure recovery architectures without disrupting existing operations.

Pakistan-based ICT company Wateen says it provides backup, disaster recovery, enterprise storage, virtualisation and compute infrastructure designed to support cyber recovery. According to the company, its solutions enable organisations to protect critical data in isolated environments, automate workload recovery and improve business continuity during cyber incidents.

Cybersecurity experts maintain that while backups remain an important part of data protection, true resilience depends on the ability to recover trusted systems quickly and reliably following a cyberattack.