A State Department of Public Health (DPH) Responsible for Critical Health

“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

Business Challenge:

Ransomware remains one of the most pressing threats to public sector organizations, with average recovery costs climbing to $2.83 million in 2024. A key driver of these costs is the inability to quickly identify a clean backup—or the painful discovery that no clean backup exists at all.

For public health agencies, this uncertainty creates devastating trade-offs: prolonged downtime while searching for uncorrupted data, or paying a ransom to restore critical services. Recovery often turns into a high-stakes guessing game: Was this backup already compromised? When did the ransomware infiltrate? Without clear answers, administrators face delays, spiraling costs, and heightened risk of reinfection.

For the Department of Public Health (DPH), the lack of verified backups meant every incident carried the risk of significant downtime, reintroducing threats, and eroding public trust at the very moment reliable health services are needed most.

Elastio Solution

Facing the constant risk of ransomware, the Department of Public Health (DPH) needed a way to eliminate the guesswork and cost of recovery.

Elastio Ransomware Recovery Assurance provided a proactive, integrated solution that turned recovery from a high-risk process into a predictable, resilient strategy.

• Proactive Backup Validation
  Instead of waiting until an attack to test recoverability, Elastio continuously inspected and validated backups across all of DPH’s AWS accounts. Administrators could see instantly which backups were clean and safe to restore.
• Seamless Integration
  The platform integrated directly into the agency’s AWS AMS environment, allowing DPH to monitor and validate backups without disrupting existing workflows or renegotiating service agreements.
• Streamlined Recovery
  During an attack, Elastio flagged compromised backups before they could be restored, ensuring only clean recovery points were used. This reduced downtime, minimized costs, and eliminated the risk of reinfection.

With Elastio, DPH replaced uncertainty with confidence—restoring critical health services quickly, safely, and at a fraction of the typical recovery cost.

Impact:

• Stronger Ransomware Resilience – Verified backups protected public trust and kept essential health services running.
• Faster, Confident Recovery – Administrators gained instant access to clean recovery points—no more guesswork, no wasted time.
• Lower Downtime and Costs – Rapid, reliable recovery minimized disruption and avoided multimillion-dollar expenses.