Acronis survey: ransomware extortion is the most pressing cyber threat for Czech companies

The prevailing model of local (on-premise) IT infrastructure hinders more effective cyber protection

 

PRAGUE, 10 November 2023 – Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection solutions, presented the results of a survey among its Czech customers and IT partners. According to 57% of them, the most pressing threat this year is ransomware extortion. The survey was conducted in October 2023 as part of the Zebra Cyber Roadshow conference series.

In addition to ransomware attacks, Czech companies also fear the theft of sensitive data or access credentials. The survey also revealed that, to protect themselves against these threats, partners and customers place the highest priority on vulnerability protection and endpoint protection. However, this effort is often complicated by IT infrastructure that is still predominantly operated in local instances – more than three quarters of respondents stated that on-premise systems prevail over cloud-based solutions or those operated as a service.

The most interesting survey findings include:

• 57% of respondents consider ransomware extortion to be this year's most pressing threat, followed by the theft of sensitive data at 43%, theft of access credentials at 40%, financial fraud using BEC emails at 32%, and DDoS attacks at 25%.
• As priority cyber protection tools, 54% identified vulnerability protection, 51% endpoint protection, 41% corporate email protection, and 41% disaster recovery.
• 78% of respondents stated that they (or their customers) primarily use IT systems deployed locally, while cloud systems prevail for 13%, and 9% use IT in the form of SaaS services most often.

“Although Acronis solutions can protect both on-premise deployments and cloud systems, in general, data in the cloud is safer than data in local instances,” said Štěpán Bínek, Cloud Solutions Sales Manager for Acronis at ZEBRA SYSTEMS. “A cloud systems provider can protect managed data more effectively against threats such as ransomware attacks. The vast majority of successful extortion attacks have targeted data stored in local deployments, and for this reason, more and more customers are turning to MSP service providers.”