Anti-Ransomware Day 2025

Uploaded on 2025-05-12 in TECHNOLOGY--Resilience, FREE TO VIEW

Ransomware is no longer just a nuisance – it has evolved into a strategic, headline-grabbing threat. UK businesses are now losing an estimated £64 billion annually to cyber-attacks, attributed to ransom payments, downtime, and lost revenue.

The barrier to entry has dropped significantly, with ransomware-as-a-service making sophisticated attacks accessible even to low-skilled criminals.

AI is working as a superpower for threat actors, enabling them to generate convincing phishing emails and adaptive malware that evades detection. Even more alarming is the rise of agentic AI – autonomous systems capable of evolving ransomware independently, accelerating both the speed and sophistication of attacks.

With incidents up 126% in the first quarter of 2025 alone, Anti-Ransomware Day highlights the urgent need for cyber resilience as a long-term, proactive strategy.

A Proactive, Not Reactive, Approach

A proactive mindset is key to preventing cyber-attacks, and being prepared for them is essential. Darren Thomson, Field CTO EMEAI at Commvault, notes that recovery takes 24 days on average, but in some cases, organisations don't resume normal operations for over 200 days. This is “often due to poor preparation and a lack of understanding of their “Minimum Viable Company” – the essential systems needed to stay operational.” Knowing your MVC is the foundation of resilience. Without it, you're flying blind when disaster strikes.

Glenn Akester, Technology Director for Cyber Security & Networks at Node4 stresses that cyber resilience is also dependent on getting the basics right - strong patching policies, endpoint protection, access controls, and real-time monitoring. “It’s not about adding more tools,” he says, “but making sure existing ones are well managed and focused on reducing risk rather than ticking compliance boxes.”

But even with strong tools, backups remain the last line of defence. Akester points out that these are increasingly under attack themselves. “Backups must be secure by design – immutable, segregated from live systems, and regularly tested. A backup that fails under pressure isn’t really a backup at all.”

Thomson highlights the role of cleanroom environments to ensure these backups remain secure: “by restoring critical cloud services in a secure, isolated space and using automation to speed up recovery, companies can minimise downtime.” These environments, combined with automation, can significantly reduce the recovery time following an attack.

Extending your protections through the entire supply chain is also a non-negotiable. Andy Swift, Cyber Security Assurance Technical Director at Six Degrees, urges organisations to adopt “zero trust principles, least privilege access, and strong boundary controls with all suppliers and partners.” Attackers often target weak points in seemingly robust security systems, so having full visibility and understanding of these is essential.

Making Cybersecurity Everyone’s Responsibility

Cyber-attacks are often mistaken as a “victimless crime” but are actually far from this. Thomson reminds us that “individuals must also take responsibility for their cybersecurity.” As recently witnessed by Spain and Portugal, society is becoming increasingly dependent on technology to survive. “Consumers should start by evaluating their own Minimum Viable Company: Could you manage without internet access? Do you have a backup plan if payment terminals go down?”

Cyber resilience is no longer just a concern for businesses. When an organisation is breached, whose data is usually compromised? Thomson stresses that “practical steps like using secure password managers, avoiding password reuse, and steering clear of public Wi-Fi without a VPN” all work to protect individuals.

From a business perspective, cyber resilience must run through the entire organisation – from the C-suite down to individual employees. Shobhit Gautam, Staff Solutions Architect, EMEA at HackerOne, emphasises the growing risk to sectors like healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. Gautam attributes this to their “growing reliance on digital systems” along with increased use of “third-party components and inadequately protected legacy systems.” He advocates for crowdsourced security measures and bug bounty programmes to identify vulnerabilities before attackers do.

Akester notes with concern that cybersecurity ranks only seventh among strategic priorities for many business leaders, while protection from ransomware doesn’t place in the top ten. Cybersecurity follows a trickle-down approach: when the C-suite prioritise it, so will the wider organisation.

A Moment To Pause, Not Panic

A ransomware attack is not a distant threat or a one-off incident – it’s an inevitability. With threats becoming more sophisticated than ever and AI supercharging these, organisations can no longer rely on hope or outdated policies. As Akester concludes, “resilience can’t be assumed, it needs to be designed, tested, and maintained.”

This Anti-Ransomware Day is a moment to pause, not panic. It’s an opportunity to reframe resilience as a priority for every person, department, and supplier. Whether you’re a CEO reviewing investment priorities or an employee rethinking your digital hygiene, the message is clear: cybersecurity is no longer someone else’s problem.

Image: Ideogram

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