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Modern ransomware deletes its tracks, leaving only encrypted data behind. Learn why malware scans miss the real threat, and what detects it.

How Elastio Turns Detection Into Proven Ransomware Readiness

Elastio today announced the launch of its new Managed “Provable Recovery” Service, enabling enterprise-level ransomware recovery assurance - with no additional operational burden. Addressing a Critical Security Gap Ransomware actors continue to exploit a missing control in enterprise security architectures: unverified backups. As AI-driven attacks evolve and use advanced tactics such as polymorphic ransomware, fileless malware, and intermittent encryption, organizations are discovering that data is being silently compromised and replicated across disaster recovery environments, leaving no clean copy to restore when ransomware attacks. Without provable recoveries, boards and shareholders face unquantifiable risk, extended downtimes, and mounting regulatory pressure under DORA, HIPAA, and NYDFS. For today’s CIOs and CISOs, the mandate is clear: enterprises must continuously prove they can recover from ransomware with uncompromised data. Protecting Revenue, Reputation, and RecoveryWith Elastio’s “Provable Recovery” Managed Service, organizations can now achieve ransomware recovery assurance without operational overhead. Delivered and managed by Elastio’s ransomware experts, this service extends the proven power of Elastio’s platform to deliver continuous, validated recoverability as a turnkey outcome. Enterprise-Level Data Integrity Validation and Last-Known Clean Assurance: The Elastio platform continuously validates the integrity of your backup and recovery data. Elastio experts operate and monitor the platform end-to-end, delivering real-time findings, expert oversight, and continuous confirmation of the last-known clean recovery point. Accelerated ROI through expert-led deployment and management: Elastio experts deploy, configure, and fully operationalize the platform to a weaponized state - finely tuned around your environment, datasets, and recovery objectives. This hands-on approach accelerates time-to-value and ensures your protection is optimized from day one.Active Threat Monitoring and Recovery Guidance:Get direct access to Elastio’s trusted Incident Response team, relied on by global enterprises for ransomware threat intelligence. Our experts proactively monitor your Elastio-protected environment for signs of threat activity and provide actionable guidance to help you respond quickly and recover with confidence.Predictable, All-Inclusive Operational Costs:Simple onboarding and transparent, month-to-month pricing mean you can activate continuous recovery assurance in hours. No upfront fees. No lock-ins. Costs scale predictably with your data footprint, keeping protection aligned with your growth.Audit Ready Recovery Compliance: Every validation produces verifiable evidence of data integrity: documentation you can share with auditors, boards, insurers, and regulators to demonstrate resilience against ransomware and data corruption. The result: assurance you can measure, prove, and stand behind. “Recovery assurance has become a requirement for every enterprise, but not every team has the resources or expertise to manage it,” said Naj Husain, CEO of Elastio. “With our Managed ‘Provable Recovery’ Service, we’re changing that. We give enterprises expert-led assurance that their recovery data is clean and recoverable without adding operational burden. It is confidence in recovery, delivered as a service.”Elastio is live on the AWS Marketplace. To help organizations start 2026 with confidence, Elastio is offering new annual-license customers one month free* when activated before December 31, 2025. For more information, visit www.elastio.com or visit us at AWS re:Invent.

How deep data integrity validation eliminated ransomware risk and strengthened cyber resilience on AWS

Matt ONeil 5OH and Stephen Dougherty, Principal Investigator at Dougherty Intelligence and Investigations

As 2025 winds down, every C-suite leader faces the same question: Can we recover tomorrow if we’re hit today? Ransomware is evolving faster than most defenses. Attackers now go straight for the backups—the very systems meant to save you. Too many organizations discover too late that their “safety net” has already been compromised. Enter 2026 confident in your ability to withstand and recover from an attack. “Before Elastio, recovery was guesswork; we were restoring blindly and hoping backups were clean. Now we know they are. Elastio was operational in days, not weeks, delivering immediate ROI with verified recovery assurance and less audit friction. When the board asks, ‘Can we recover tomorrow if we’re hit today?’ I have the confidence and proof to say "Yes." The proof is built into our daily operations.” - CISO, Financial Services The time to act is now. The cost of waiting? Measured in millions, and in reputational damage, lost customers, lost data, and on and on. Every Day You Wait, Risk Increases: Ransomware attacks are up 80% year over year, and backup data is the #1 target. Elastio detects and removes infected backups before attackers weaponize them—so recovery becomes proactive, not reactive.Be Protected by the Weekend: Elastio’s agentless, SaaS-based deployment integrates seamlessly with your existing backup and cloud environments. You can be fully operational in under 48 hours—no new infrastructure, no downtime.Turn Recovery from Guesswork into a Guarantee: Without proof of clean recovery points, restoring data is a gamble. Elastio pinpoints the last known clean point so you can restore with certainty, not luck.The Cost of Waiting Is Measured in Millions: The average ransomware recovery costs $4.5M and nearly a month of downtime. Elastio mitigates that risk at a fraction of the cost. The ROI is immediate—and measurable.Compliance Deadlines Don’t Pause for Breaches: Regulators, including SEC, NYDFS, DORA, and MAS TRM, now demand verifiable proof of recoverability. Elastio delivers continuous, automated evidence of clean backups—reducing audit friction and regulatory risk.Backups Are the New Battlefield: Attackers target the recovery process itself. Elastio detects encryption patterns, dormant malware, and hidden payloads that traditional EDR tools miss before they spread.Strengthen the AWS Foundation You Already Own: Elastio runs natively within AWS allowing for simplifying your deployment (no new console, no new agents, no disruption). You enhance resilience without adding complexity.Stop Planning, Start Protecting: The organizations hit hardest are the ones that planned to act later. Ransomware resilience isn’t a Q2 initiative—it’s a right-now requirement.Give Leadership Real Confidence: Boards and CISOs want proof, not promises. Elastio provides verifiable integrity reports—evidence your backups are clean and your recovery is trustworthy.Transfer the Risk, Today: Within a week, Elastio can validate your environment, protect your backups, and deliver continuous evidence of clean recovery points. Don’t carry this risk into 2026. Enter 2026 Confident Ransomware Resilience Can’t Wait: Ransomware resilience isn’t just a security decision—it’s a leadership decision. Validate your recovery, protect your brand, and walk into 2026 with confidence—not uncertainty.

Elastio’s Quarantine for AWS Backup automatically isolates infected or suspicious recovery points, ensuring ransomware-free recoverability.

Cyberattacks are evolving faster than traditional defenses. Gartner’s recent research note, “Enhance Ransomware Cyber Resilience With a Secure Recovery Environment” by Fintan Quinn, highlights a critical shift: relying solely on malware detection is no longer sufficient for safe recovery. “Most modern ransomware tactics bypass traditional malware scanners, meaning backups may appear ‘clean’ during scans but prove unusable when restored.” — Gartner, 2025 In other words, your backups may look healthy but still be compromised. Attackers increasingly target recovery systems, hiding fileless or memory-resident ransomware deep within snapshots and backups. Once encryption triggers, the damage extends not just to production data, but to the very safety nets organizations depend on. The New Standard: Advanced Validation Gartner advises that companies “equip recovery environments with advanced capabilities that analyze backup data using content-based analytics and data integrity validation.” In other words, These aren’t nice-to-have features—they’re now required for compliance and operational resilience under frameworks like ECB/DORA, FCA/PRA, and NYDFS. This is where Elastio stands apart. Elastio delivers agentless, enterprise-wide provable recovery by continuously validating backups and cloud storage to ensure ransomware-free recoverability within defined SLAs. It acts as a provable control, not just another detection layer—providing the evidence CISOs and boards need to quantify ransomware risk and recovery readiness. Case in Point: Jaguar Land Rover The Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) attack in 2025 illustrates what happens when malware scans are mistaken for proof of safety.The HellCat Ransomware Group used stolen JIRA credentials to infiltrate their network. Though malware scans passed, unvalidated backups delayed restoration for weeks, costing the company an estimated £1.5 billion in downtime and disruption. With Elastio’s Provable Recovery, JLR could have identified backup corruption early, isolated infected data, and restored from a verifiably clean point—closing the weeks-long recovery gap and mitigating both business and reputational impact. From Prevention to Proof The takeaway is clear: Malware scanners detect some threats.Elastio proves recovery. Modern resilience requires both—but proof is the missing control. Boards, regulators, and insurers no longer accept “we think we can recover.” They demand provable recovery assurance with continuous validation and measurable recovery integrity scores. Final Thought Prevention can fail. Proof cannot.Elastio gives organizations the evidence that recovery is not just possible—it’s provable. Prove it once. Validate it continuously. Trust it always.Visit elastio.com/platform to learn how provable recovery builds real resilience and board-level confidence

Cybercrime isn’t slowing down, and neither can we. That’s the central message of Detonation Point, the podcast hosted by Matt O’Neill, former U.S. Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in charge of cyber operations. In this series, O’Neill goes inside the fight against cybercrime, hearing directly from defenders across government, infrastructure, and enterprise. Each episode dives into the strategies, technologies, and minds working to keep our data, businesses, and critical infrastructure resilient in a rapidly evolving threat landscape. In the latest episode, Matt sits down with Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, Chief of Cyber Intelligence at Elastio, a cyber resilience company redefining ransomware detection and recovery. Dr. Varadarajan’s career spans decades of research and hands-on innovation, from building antivirus software in high school to developing real-world systems that protect enterprise data today. The conversation covers Dr. Varadarajan’s journey from early curiosity about computing in India to his current role, where he balances deep innovation with the practical needs of Elastio’s customers. Listeners get an inside look at how Elastio approaches ransomware protection, combining multiple layers of detection and defense to ensure organizations can recover quickly, even in the event of sophisticated attacks. “Ransomware isn’t just about disrupting systems -it’s about destroying trust and operational continuity. Protecting your backups and validating your data isn’t optional anymore; it’s the only way to ensure you can recover when attacks strike.” - Dr. Varadarajan, Elastio Key takeaways from the episode include: Ransomware is evolving, but so are defenses: Ransomware, which is not the same as malware, has caused attackers to lower the barrier to entry with automation and AI, yet companies can stay ahead with layered, mathematically rigorous detection systems.Backup integrity is critical: Ransomware groups now target recovery by corrupting or encrypting backups - 90% of incidents involve backup tampering. Fileless, memory-based attacks compromise data before it’s backed up, silently infecting systems and evading detection until recovery, leaving even “clean” or immutable backups untrustworthy without verification.Planning and preparation save organizations: Beyond technology, having a detailed recovery plan, understanding recovery priorities, and exercising that plan are essential to minimize downtime and reduce the likelihood of paying a ransom or reinfection.AI is both a threat and an opportunity: While attackers may leverage AI to find vulnerabilities faster, defenders can also harness AI to strengthen detection and response, ensuring attacks are caught before they escalate. Ransomware is not the only threat: Modern attacks also include data exfiltration and targeted extortion schemes, making comprehensive resilience strategies more important than ever. Dr. Varadarajan emphasizes that ransomware protection isn’t just about avoiding payment—it’s about business resiliency and data corruption. By combining real-time monitoring, validated backups, and proactive defense, organizations can maintain operational continuity and stay a step ahead of attackers. For anyone interested in the future of cybersecurity, this episode is a must-listen. It blends expert insight, practical guidance, and fascinating stories from someone who has spent a lifetime understanding both the science and strategy behind defending against cyber threats. Listen to the full episode of Detonation Point, presented by Elastio, to learn how organizations can truly stay resilient in the face of evolving cybercrime.

Elastio’s next-gen dashboards deliver real-time recovery insights aligned with global standards to simplify compliance, reduce risk, and ease audits. BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, October 7, 2025 -- Elastio today announced the release of its Compliance-ready recovery capabilities via global security dashboards, designed to help organizations strengthen operational resilience and meet rising regulatory demands across multiple cybersecurity frameworks. As ransomware and malicious encryption become certainties rather than mere threats, regulators are placing greater emphasis on backup and data integrity, recovery testing, and incident response planning. Elastio addresses these challenges directly by detecting ransomware and data corruption, well before the recovery process begins. “Compliance requirements aren’t abstract checkboxes. They’re designed to protect businesses from the very real and costly impacts of ransomware,” said Ron Green, Cyber Resiliency Board member for Elastio and cybersecurity expert. “For customers, the stakes are high and regulators expect proof of resilience and data integrity.” Alignment With Leading Security Standards Elastio’s capabilities are designed to support key controls in NYDFS 500.16, DORA, NIST CSF, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and PCI DSS v4.0, among others: NYDFS 500.16 – Validates backup integrity, continuously tests recovery readiness, and provides immutable scan logs to support incident response and audit requirements.PCI DSS v4.0 – Delivers malware detection in backup data, change monitoring, and verified recovery paths to support incident response and data integrity mandates.DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) – Strengthens ICT risk management, recovery testing, and reporting obligations, including third-party oversight.NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) – Extends coverage across Detect, Respond, and Recover functions through continuous monitoring, automated tagging, and validated clean restores.ISO/IEC 27001:2022 – Provides end-to-end evidence collection, forensic readiness, and malware protection aligned to Annex A controls. Why This Matters In today’s threat landscape, resilience is no longer optional; it’s survival. Traditional approaches can’t keep up. Elastio’s next-generation dashboards give customers the visibility and assurance they need to: Ensure recoverability – Detecting ransomware in backups before recovery ensures that clean data is always available.Reduce audit pain – Built-in logs, reporting, and validation directly map to regulatory controls, saving time and cost during audits.Strengthen resilience – Continuous backup verification and automated recovery testing assure that systems can be restored quickly and safely.Protect investments across platforms – Operating independently of the backup source, Elastio validates data integrity across multiple systems and cloud providers. Elastio turns regulatory obligations into operational advantages. Customers not only stay compliant with frameworks like NYDFS 500.16, DORA, NIST CSF, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, but also gain real-world confidence in their ability to withstand and recover from attacks. Reducing Risk and Audit Burden Elastio’s independent, source-agnostic approach enables organizations to scan and validate backups across disparate systems without impacting production. The solution provides: Continuous ransomware and malware detection in backupsAutomated validation of recovery paths to ensure data cleanlinessImmutable audit logs for compliance verification and forensicsIntegration with security operations for incident response support By fitting seamlessly into security and compliance workflows, Elastio helps financial services firms and other regulated industries reduce both operational risk and audit complexity. View a short video Learn more To learn more, please visit our Elastio Recovery Ready Compliance page: https://elastio.com/platform/recovery-ready-complianceTo join us for an executive discussion at AWS reInvent, please visit: https://elastio.com/awsreinvent

It’s Not Just About Prevention, It’s About Recovery October is more than just a time for candy. It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, reminding us that security is an ongoing mindset, not just a task to check off. For any business, threats are changing quickly. Hackers now target your backups and your ability to recover, not just your main systems. This year, it’s more important than ever to remember that resilience is not just nice to have—it’s essential. Why “Backups” Alone Don’t Cut It in 2025 Backups were once your safety net. Now, they are often the target. Fileless or low-and-slow attacks can silently encrypt data without triggering alarms.Ransomware actors infiltrate backup pipelines and “poison” restore points.This means that restoring from a backup could bring back the same threat you were trying to remove. AWS offers tools like AWS Backup, immutable storage, and air-gapped vaults. But there’s still a challenge: how can you be sure your backups are clean and ready to use? Elastio helps solve this by making recovery reliable and closes the gap. The Elastio approach is simple—don’t wait for an attack to test your recovery, but the solution is critical to survival. Real-World Success Stories Abstract arguments are fine, but nothing beats real customer stories. Here are a few we’ve published: SaaS Company Beats “Extinction-Level” Attack: A stealth, fileless ransomware hit. The attackers had already encrypted data and embedded themselves into backups. Most recovery efforts would have failed. But with Elastio and AWS, the team identified a clean recovery point in hours and restored operations “For a SaaS company, long-term downtime is the kiss of death. If you can’t meet your SLAs, it can be an extinction-level event.” — Jeff Fudge, Director of Cloud Solutions, JetSweep State Health Agency: Public Trust on the Line: For a public health department, downtime isn’t just inconvenient; it can disrupt essential services. By continuously validating backups across their AWS environments, Elastio gave them confidence that they could recover fast, reliably, and cleanly. “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, State Health Agency Banking and Finance: Hardening Financial-Risk Posture:Financial organizations are prime targets. In a recent project, Elastio delivered a ransomware resilience posture for a global payments company, protecting them from both direct attacks and backup-level compromise.“Elastio has been a game changer. It’s not just about meeting NYDFS compliance—it’s about knowing we’re truly prepared to protect our business and our customers.” CIO, Financial Services These aren’t isolated wins. They are proof points that integrating proven recovery in environments changes the game. Make Cyber Resilience Non-Negotiable To wrap up: Read the Elastio case studies in our Knowledge Hub. See how others are winning.Audit your backup and recovery posture. Are you validating clean restore points, or hoping they work when you need them? What is your ransomware risk?Let’s chat! If you want to build a resilient, verifiable, and proactive recovery strategy, we should connect. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is about raising awareness, but awareness should lead to action. Let’s make 2025 the year you stop fearing ransomware recovery and start owning it.

Author: Eswar Nalamaru Ransomware has evolved beyond disruption; it now threatens business survival. Malware creates exposure, but once ransomware encrypts your data, the real risk is losing the ability to recover. Picture the boardroom: a director leans forward and asks the CISO a simple question: “If ransomware hits tonight, can you prove we’ll recover without compromise?” The room goes quiet. In that moment, the CISO realizes prevention is expected—but proof of recovery is what truly matters.This is the existential challenge every enterprise faces today: guaranteeing recovery that is provable, uncompromised, and fast enough to keep the business running. Here are five questions every CISO must ask going into Q4 or 2026: 1. Can we prove that your backups are free of ransomware? Backups that contain hidden encryption or dormant malware are liabilities, not assets. Without continuous validation of backup integrity, recovery risks reintroduce ransomware into production. Boards should press for evidence-based assurance that every backup is verified, uncompromised, and ready to support recovery. Anything less is not resilience—it’s roulette. 2. How quickly can we identify a clean recovery point? Downtime costs escalate minute by minute. Manual validation is too slow, and attackers know it. An AI-driven recovery platform can accelerate the detection of clean recovery points, enabling day-zero recovery. Speed to recovery is no longer just a technical metric—it is a competitive advantage that protects revenue, brand, and customer trust. 3. Are recovery processes embedded into our workflows? Recovery cannot sit on the sidelines. It must be built into daily operations—integrated with security tools, cloud platforms, and incident response. When recovery is operationalized, it reduces risk, eliminates human error, and ensures resilience is invisible but indispensable. 4. Do we have provable evidence of clean recovery? Boards, regulators, and customers no longer accept verbal assurances. They expect audit-ready proof that recovery is uncompromised. Recovery is not just a technical function—it is a fiduciary responsibility. CISOs and executive leadership must be able to show verifiable resilience to those who hold them accountable. 5. Are we ready for AI-driven decision-making? As AI systems increasingly automate critical workflows, resilience must become autonomous and self-healing. Future-ready organizations will rely on AI to detect, validate, and recover—without manual intervention. But those systems can only be trusted if they operate on clean, uncompromised data. Final Thoughts: Closing the Missing Control Traditional security and immutable backups are no longer enough. The missing control is data integrity verification—the assurance that every recovery point is clean and trustworthy. Without it, cyber resilience remains a gamble. Elastio closes that gap. By validating backups, detecting ransomware at day zero, and delivering provable recovery assurance, we enable CISOs to demonstrate resilience with confidence—to boards, regulators, and customers alike. CISOs who can prove recovery don’t just mitigate ransomware risk. They redefine resilience as a board-level business advantage—the difference between disruption and survival. Whether you're a CISO, IT lead, or cyber champion, this piece offers strategic insights to rethink your cybersecurity posture. Ready to explore how Elastio can fortify your defense-in-depth strategy—and why it’s emerging as a must-have for ransomware readiness? Let’s dive in. Learn More at www.elastio.com/platform