Another of the world’s major manufacturers was laid low recently by a ransomware attack. Production at ASCO, the giant Belgian airplane parts maker, has been halted for over a week with no end in sight. Nearly 1,000 employees have been sent home on paid leave while the company struggles to restore critical systems frozen by the malware assault. Unfortunately, the fate of ASCO has been shared by many organizations that are ill-prepared to combat the world’s deadliest malware threat. The incident reflects a number of major trends in the ongoing struggle between cybercriminals and their targets in the public and private sector.

As small businesses abandon CrashPlan – the backup service that recently abandoned them – many are migrating to reliable and easy-to-use business backup solutions from Acronis, which deliver more comprehensive coverage of their valuable data. Business owners, as well as the service providers who help these companies with their IT needs, can see for themselves how Acronis has the services they need to ensure the business continuity they expect.

Last week it was revealed that certain Intel processors contain a new set of hardware vulnerabilities that enables “speculative execution attacks”. In these attacks, a malicious app or guest virtual machine gains access to the data stored inside CPU buffers – allowing hackers to bypass the security restrictions on the system. The bad news: The researchers who found the MDS bug say it likely affects all Intel CPUs released since 2011 – and as a result, Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure could be exposed to an attack. The good news: As soon as the problem was identified, Acronis immediately developed a fix so your data won’t be at risk once you’ve installed the update.

A new round of backup file exclusions and backup deletions leaves CrashPlan’s SMB customers unable to protect their business-critical data – and looking for a new backup and recovery service.