Ransomware Readiness

Ransomware is no longer a question of if but when. Prepared organisations recover in hours or days. Unprepared organisations face weeks of disruption, regulatory scrutiny, customer attrition and lasting reputational damage.

Preparation Before the Attack

• Asset and dependency mapping: know what is critical and what depends on what.
• Backups: maintain immutable, offline or air-gapped backups and test recovery regularly.
• Segmentation: limit lateral movement through network segmentation and least-privilege access.
• Endpoint protection: deploy modern EDR, email security and vulnerability management.
• Training: make phishing awareness and incident reporting part of the security culture.

Response During the Attack

Have a clear incident response plan with defined roles, escalation paths and communication templates. Isolate affected systems, preserve forensic evidence, engage legal and cyber insurance advisors early, and notify regulators and customers as required.

Recovery and Resilience

Recovery is not just about restoring data. It is about rebuilding trust. Communicate transparently with customers, employees and partners. Conduct a post-incident review, update controls and run tabletop exercises to test improvements.

Ransomware readiness is a board-level resilience issue. Executives should receive regular assurance that the organisation can detect, respond and recover before a single incident becomes a business crisis.