Customer: A State Department of Public Health responsible for critical health initiatives
Business Challenge:
Ransomware poses a significant threat to public sector organizations, with the average recovery cost surging to $2.83 million in 2024. The primary driver of high recovery costs is the inability to quickly locate the last clean backup—or the discovery, too late, that no clean backup exists. Without verified backups, agencies often face devastating choices: prolonged downtime to locate uncorrupted data or paying a ransom to attackers.
Identifying which recovery point is safe to restore during an attack often becomes a time-consuming and unreliable guessing game for infrastructure administrators. Was the backup already compromised? When did the ransomware infiltrate the system? Without immediate answers, these questions turn recovery into a high-risk, prolonged process, increasing downtime and costs while jeopardizing critical public health services.
Without a clear way to identify clean backups, the DPH risked significant delays in recovery and a potential reintroduction of threats, endangering public trust and operations.
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“Ransomware recovery used to feel like walking a tightrope. With Elastio, we’ve replaced guesswork with certainty, knowing our backups are clean and ready to restore—letting us focus on protecting public health.”
— Information Security Manager
Elastio Solution
Elastio Ransomware Recovery Assurance Platform (Elastio platform) provided the Department Public Health (DPH) with a proactive, efficient solution to reduce recovery costs in the event of an attack:
- Proactive Backup Validation: Elastio platform continuously inspected and validated all backups across all the DPH’s AWS accounts, ensuring administrators knew which backups were clean and safe to restore.
- Seamless Integration: Elastio platfom was integrated directly into the agency’s AWS AMS environment, allowing the agency to monitor and validate backups without modifying existing workflows or service agreements.
- Streamlined Recovery Process: Elastio platform flagged compromised backups before they could be restored, ensuring only clean backups were used during recovery and reducing the risk of reinfection.
Impact:
- Enhanced Ransomware Resilience: Elastio platform’s proactive scanning provided confidence in the integrity of backups, protecting public trust and ensuring uninterrupted delivery of essential health services.
- Eliminated Guesswork in Recovery: Infrastructure administrators no longer had to sift through thousands of recovery points, saving critical time during ransomware events. Elastio ensured immediate access to validated, clean backups.
- Reduced Downtime and Costs: By removing uncertainty and inefficiencies in recovery, the agency was able to minimize downtime, avoid escalating costs, and resume operations quickly.
