16 Jul Beyond cyber defence

Mike Chen, Senior Regional Sales Manager – Middle East at Synology, explores how ransomware and AI-driven attacks are shifting the cyber threat landscape; targeting not just systems, but organisations’ ability to recover, and redefining what true operational resilience looks like.

As ransomware and AI-driven cyberattacks grow more sophisticated, organisations are facing a critical shift: prevention alone is no longer enough. Attacks are now designed to disrupt recovery itself — targeting backups, credentials and restoration processes — turning cyber incidents into full-scale operational crises. In this evolving threat landscape, the true measure of resilience is not whether an attack can be stopped, but how quickly and effectively business operations can be restored when it cannot.

As per IBM’s 2026 X-Force research, there was a 49 percent year-over-year increase in active ransomware organisations globally, showcasing how it has become more aggressive, fragmented and volatile.

Hackers targeted recovery environments, administrative credentials and backup infrastructure prior to the main attack. The objective was simple – either maximise disruptions to operations, eliminate opportunities for recovery or demand ransom from businesses. Discussions can no longer be limited to preventing cyberattacks, but must also focus on how quickly, safely and confidently companies may recover in the event that prevention ultimately fails.

With the Middle East facing increasingly complex cyber threats, it is actively driving digital transformation programs. After the UAE reported cyberattacks in February 2026, which include ransomware efforts, phishing campaigns and invasive tools such as artificial intelligence and automation, it became clear for businesses in the region; hacks are no longer isolated IT issues. These are operational continuity incidents that directly affect customer trust, reputation, service delivery and regulatory exposure.

Consequently, the international ransomware business has been expanding at an unpredictable rate. Numerous threateners have been collaborating and exploiting vulnerable people. Despite these threats, businesses operate on the presumption that having backups protects them.

This increasing gap between recovery and confidence has become more apparent. Only 28 per cent of security leaders recover their data after a ransomware event. Despite that, 90 per cent believe a swift recovery can be the perfect method, as per Veeam’s 2026 Data Trust and Resilience Report. After attacks, organisations typically recover only 72 percent of the impacted data. These results demonstrate a significant gap between recovery performance in the real world and perceived readiness.

In this regard, segregated and unchangeable backups have become crucial aspects of modern cyber resilience plans. In the event that an attacker gains administrative access or compromises credentials, immutable backups guarantee that data cannot be changed, erased or encrypted for a predetermined retention period.

Besides the recovery environments and key production systems, isolated backups offer an extra degree of security. This division helps protect what is essentially the organisation’s ultimate recovery route and lowers the possibility of lateral movement during attacks.

According to data revealed by NCC Group, industrial organisations were the victims of over 2,000 attacks and roughly 30 per cent of ransomware-related activity was recorded on average during the preceding 12 months.

In this connected era, organisations cannot guarantee protection against breaches in IT infrastructure. Phishing tactics facilitated by AI, supply-chain breach, credential theft and destructive malware approaches are all getting more complex and scalable. Although prevention-focused cybersecurity is still crucial, it is no longer adequate on its own.

For security leaders, the priority should now be to test whether recovery plans can work under the stress of real attacks. This requires maintaining immutable and isolated backup copies, restricting administrative access to recovery systems, regularly validating backup integrity, and testing restoration timelines for critical applications. Recovery should not be treated as an occasional IT exercise, but as a routine business continuity strategy that involves IT, security, compliance and leadership teams.

One of the key issues that companies need to consider is the prevention of ransomware or any other cyberattacks, along with the restoration of reliable operations in the event of an incident. Recovery preparation needs to become a regular business practice rather than an occasional IT task. Organisations need to have immutable backup policies, separate recovery environments, regular recovery testing, strong access control and full visibility across increasingly distributed hybrid IT infrastructures.

It is not just a discussion; it leads to the credibility of the leadership to ensure business continuity and effective risk management. Regulatory expectations surrounding operational resilience, digital trust and data protection continue to strengthen. Soon, recovery assurance will become increasingly important for compliance, stakeholder confidence and long-term competitiveness.

Organisations that are prepared for cyber risk will not be equipped with all tools to prevent it. It will be companies that are ready to restore operations quickly, safely and under pressure. In an environment with increasing cyberattacks such as ransomware, isolated backups are no longer just a requirement, but safeguards for continued operations.