Ransomware has become a defining cybersecurity threat, increasing in scale, sophistication, and cost. In the UK alone, recent months have seen a wave of high-profile incidents disrupting everything from retail and logistics to public services – with consequences that reach far beyond the IT department.
Take the case of Marks & Spencer. A major breach in April 2025 exposed customer data, triggered widespread operational disruption, and is already slated to have cost the company £300 million – apart from the billion pounds or more the incident has wiped from the retailer’s stock market value.
At Co-op, a ransomware-linked outage halted critical systems. The Legal Aid Agency suffered a breach of sensitive legal and financial records. Meanwhile, even Harrods and logistics firm Peter Green Chilled weren’t spared. These are not isolated events – they’re signals of a broader shift.
The UK retail industry alone lost over £2.2 billion to shoplifting last year, according to the British Retail Consortium. And while theft may be an age-old problem, ransomware has become its digital cousin – often just as costly, but far harder to trace and recover from.
As businesses count the cost of downtime, data loss, and reputational fallout, one thing is clear: ransomware isn’t just a cybersecurity issue. It’s a business issue. In a digital world, ransomware has become nothing more than the cost of doing business online, just as shoplifting is to its bricks-and-mortar equivalent.
Realistically, the best cybersecurity efforts are more deterrent than panacea these days. And besides ensuring they do the necessary to secure the perimeter, the most logical thing for organizations to focus on is how to recover from the inevitable cyberattack – this, however, is a stumbling block for many businesses.
It now takes organizations an average of five weeks to fully recover from a cyberattack. In sectors where every hour offline can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, that rate of loss is simply no longer sustainable. Yet, many still over-index on prevention, when it’s recovery speed, not perimeter defense, that ultimately defines the business impact of an attack. The question is no longer if you’ll be targeted, but how fast you can bounce back.
The reality of recovery: why time is the new risk factor
The longer data recovery takes, the more damage is done, and yet 72% of organizations take more than a week to restore operations after an attack. Manufacturing and healthcare average over six weeks.
These delays are not merely inconvenient. According to ITIC’s 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Report, more than 90% of mid-size and large enterprises say one hour of downtime now costs more than £220,000. Recovery timelines that stretch into days or weeks can translate into millions in lost revenue, disrupted services, and long-term damage to brand trust and shareholder confidence.
What hybrid cloud really means and why it matters
Hybrid cloud storage combines the performance of on-premises systems with the scalability and durability of the cloud. For instance, in hybrid cloud models, data can be cached locally for fast access, and every change can be stored in immutable cloud object storage in real time.
This architecture supports AI-readiness, multi-site collaboration, and petabyte-scale growth – but critically, it also bakes in ransomware resilience. Where traditional file servers and backups can be encrypted or deleted, hybrid cloud platforms maintain a centralized, tamper-proof record of every file version, stored securely and out of reach from attackers.
It’s why hybrid cloud storage is no longer a fringe technology – it’s becoming the standard for modern IT resilience.
Hybrid cloud’s secret weapon: file versioning and immutability
Ransomware attacks typically encrypt critical data and demand payment. More aggressive attackers now double down, leaking or selling sensitive data to increase leverage. But if your organization can roll back files to their clean state before the attack – in minutes – the threat loses its sting.
This ‘point-in-time’ recovery isn’t theoretical. A growing number of organizations are entrusting their file data to platforms that capture continuous, immutable snapshots, allowing them to restore affected files instantly. Some enterprises are now recovering in minutes, not weeks.
Legacy backup processes, with their reliance on daily or weekly windows, can’t keep pace with modern threats. That’s why many organizations are moving to continuous file versioning, with snapshot intervals as short as five minutes – enabling near-instant recovery, eliminating ransom payments, and removing the need for days of manual restoration.
IT teams no longer need to rebuild entire environments; they simply select a clean point in time and restore affected files with just a few clicks.
Recovery starts with readiness – and the right tools
Recovery speed matters, but containment is just as important. Modern hybrid cloud platforms often include built-in ransomware detection, monitoring for abnormal file activity, quarantining threats, and enabling surgical recovery.
It’s not surprising, then, that hybrid cloud users are 29% more likely to recover within a week than their non-hybrid peers. More importantly, they can isolate and restore only the affected regions or datasets – avoiding full outages and business-wide shutdowns.
But the technology alone isn’t enough. IT teams must be equipped with the right tools, processes, and authority to act fast when it matters. Hoping they’ll manage with legacy backups and wishful thinking is no longer tenable, and risks turning a contained incident into a company-wide crisis.
As one IT leader recently shared, having successfully restored operations after an attack: “The recovery was so fast, the conversation shifted entirely. It was no longer about recovering data – it was about cleaning affected endpoints and containing disruption.” In other words, recovery becomes a coordination exercise, not a catastrophe.
Cyber resilience gaps and how hybrid cloud bridges them
Despite ongoing modernization efforts, many organizations still face critical gaps in their ransomware response:
- Data security and privacy concerns are significant barriers to adopting new technologies
- There’s a stark lack of in-house skills to manage and secure transitions, and
- Organizations themselves admit their data isn’t backed up, immutable, or easily recoverable
That’s a dangerous trio, and one that increases the risk of prolonged, expensive downtime.
Hybrid cloud platforms help close these gaps. They automate protection, centralize file versioning, and simplify recovery, even for lean IT teams. With immutable cloud snapshots and integrated monitoring, organizations can move from reactive crisis management to confident, controlled recovery.
Resilience is the real differentiator
Ransomware is now a fact of life – as inevitable as death and taxes, as the saying goes. And it’s becoming more targeted, more professional, and more destructive. The UK has already seen the consequences this year.
Hybrid cloud storage offers a practical and proven way to reduce both the risk and the impact of an attack. It turns recovery into a competitive differentiator – the difference between days of downtime and business as usual.
And let’s be honest: whether you’re protecting customer data or the availability of Percy Pigs, you can’t afford to get recovery wrong.
Check out out rankings of the best cloud backup platforms.
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