Ransomware Recovery:
A Comprehensive Guide
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Contents
Introduction 3
What Is Ransomware Recovery? 3
Understanding Ransomware Attacks 4
Best Practices for Ransomware Recovery 4
Under a Ransomware Attack 5
Immediate Response 5
Containment 6
Assessment 6
Negotiation with Threat Actors 7
Recovery 7
Restore Data From Veeam Backups 8
Decision to Pay the Ransom 9
Professional Expert Incident Response 10
Final Thoughts 11
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Introduction
Ransomware attacks have become a daily occurrence,
affecting organizations of all sizes and industries. According to
the Veeam Ransomware Trends Report, 75% of organizations
75 %
suffered at least one ransomware attack in 2023, with many
experiencing multiple attacks.
The financial cost of paying the ransom isn’t the only
cost companies suffered in the aftermath of an attack.
Ransomware can cripple sales and operations of a company,
so organizations must prepare by implementing strong of organizations suffered at least
cybersecurity measures, a comprehensive backup strategy, and one ransomware attack in 2023
a powerful incident response plan. These plans must be tested
regularly to ensure the backups are complete and usable and
the incident response plan can be implemented quickly.
This e-book aims to provide a guide on ransomware recovery,
drawing insights from real-life experiences and expert advice.
What Is
Ransomware Recovery?
Ransomware is one of the biggest threats facing organizations
today. Veeam’s 2024 State of Ransomware Report indicates
that 96% of ransomware attacks targeted backup repositories,
and 43% of affected data was unrecoverable.
Ransomware recovery is a set of actions organizations take
to mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks. Following
ransomware prevention best practices is always advisable.
As a preemptive measure, organizations must implement
immutable data backups and configuration snapshots that
allow them to rebuild their systems.
Successful ransomware recovery depends in big part to
the effectiveness of the organization’s backup and data
protection processes and incident response plan.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Understanding
Ransomware Attacks 32% of the cost is typically
the ransom payment
68%
Ransomware attacks are not just about encrypting data and stemming from other
demanding a ransom. Threat actors often target backup financial impacts to
repositories to prevent quick recovery, and in some cases, they organizations
even delete backups.
A growing trend in ransomware attacks is the double extortion,
where threat actors not only encrypt data but also exfiltrate it.
If the ransom is not paid, they threaten to make the stolen data
public. This tactic increases the pressure on organizations to pay
the ransom, as the potential exposure of sensitive organization
and customer data can have severe consequences.
The financial impact of a ransomware attack extends beyond
the ransom payment, affecting operations, sales, and customers.
In fact, according to the 2024 Veeam Ransomware Trends
Report, only 32% of the cost is typically the ransom payment,
with the remaining 68% stemming from other financial impacts
to organizations.
Best Practices for It is highly recommended to
everyone to review at all these good
Ransomware Recovery assistance and documentation from
organizations such as:
There is plenty of good documentation from agencies and • Australian Cyber Security Centre
government organizations around cybersecurity, they all • Canadian Centre for
Cyber Security
provide good documentation and monitoring assistance.
• Germany’s Federal Office for
Sometimes local government or national governments reach Information Security
out to organizations and tell them that they are looking at • Netherlands’ National Cyber
their exfiltrated data being distributed in the dark web. Security Centre
There are a number of different documents with recommendations • New Zealand’s National Cyber
Security Centre
across industries so instead of just reading that documentation or
blueprints, in the following sections we are going to talk about real- • Korea Internet & Security Agency
life experience and advice. • Israel’s National Cyber Directorate
• Japan’s National Center of
Incident Readiness and Strategy
for Cybersecurity
• Cyber Security Agency
of Singapore
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Under a Ransomware Attack
Let’s start with the basics: what happens when a ransomware
attack occurs? There are several signs that indicate
an organization is under attack. Losing access to systems and
files make people in the organization notice that there’s something
wrong. In some cases, threat actors can block screens, like with
CryptoLocker, which displays a message on Windows computers.
However, this doesn’t always happen. If there’s data exfiltration,
the organization might not notice anything while the data is
being stolen. Everything continues as normal until a ransom note
appears. Sometimes, the ransom note is just one of the files
among the encrypted ones, or it might come in an email.
Immediate Response
When a ransomware attack occurs, the immediate response
is crucial. It’s essential to stay calm and assess the situation
before taking any action. Disconnecting systems too quickly
can corrupt ongoing encryption processes, making recovery
even more challenging.
Stay calm, do not panic, and look for expertise. Do this by working
with internal experts or go to an external expert vendor. Always
talk to your legal team especially about the ransom note and if you
have a cyber insurance policy. Let the cyber insurance company
know about the attack.
In some cases, part of the encrypted files included the cyber
insurance policy. It’s important to have backups and that policy
in multiple locations, multiple backups. This is the time to activate
pre-established communications channels with every stakeholder
in the organization.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Containment
Mobilize the response team, including forensics and focus
on containment. The initial recommendation is to collect all
artifacts, including ransom notes, samples of encrypted files,
and any malware or executables involved in the encryption or
data transfer. This data should then be analyzed by the team.
The focus should be on containment and staying calm.
Key steps for initial containment include:
• Identifying affected systems and data
• Changing admin passwords
• Isolating endpoints
• Understanding recovery time objectives (RTO)
and recovery point objectives (RPO)
• Communicating internally
• Reviewing the insurance policy
Having multiple zones and a well-distributed architecture will
make it easier to isolate affected systems.
Assessment
The next step is to assess the affected systems and files. Determine
the type of encryption and the file extensions used. In some cases,
files may not be truly encrypted but simply renamed, making
them inaccessible.
Threat actors vary in expertise, from professional organizations
and expert lone wolves, to new and unsophisticated. Focus
on evaluating your backups and ensure they are clean and
malware-free. Evaluate the time required for recovery. Expert
assistance, such as from Coveware by Veeam, can help forecast
recovery based on a complete assessment of all the artifacts
previously mentioned.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Negotiation with Threat Actors
Engaging with threat actors doesn’t necessarily mean paying
the ransom. It can be an opportunity to extract valuable
information about how the attack occurred. Some threat actors
may provide detailed information about the vulnerabilities they
exploited. However, assume that any communication could be
made public, so maintain professionalism.
Even if both parties agree, there’s no guarantee that decryption
keys will be provided or that exfiltrated data will be deleted.
Experience tells us that many threat actor groups care about their
reputation and may negotiate fairly to maintain it. However, some
groups may not provide proper decryption tools or keys which
make decryption challenging even after the threat actor provided
the tool and keys. Keep in mind that this could be a long process
that you can use for your recovery efforts while negotiating.
Recovery
When it comes to recovery, having clean backups is ideal.
However, it’s also crucial to evaluate the time required for
recovery. Consider how much time you have in terms of
operations, how much data you can afford to lose, and other
factors. Depending on the situation, some systems may need to
be rebuilt, and sometimes even the data itself needs to be rebuilt.
This process could take anywhere from days to several weeks.
A key piece of advice is to document data prioritization, similar
to playbooks for recovery and incident response. Prioritize what
needs to be recovered first. In some cases, during negotiations,
the decision might be to choose to recover only the highest
priority digital assets, while other data can be lost. It’s essential to
know what the highest priority is and what needs to be recovered
first. Determine what is critical enough to pay for decryption
keys, as recovering these critical pieces first will allow to recover
the rest later. There are many considerations to keep in mind
during this step.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Restore Data From Veeam Backups
With Veeam Data Platform, there’s a choice for recovery between restoring to original servers or to
isolated clean rooms. This second option means an opportunity to clean up, verify, and test recovery
from an isolated environment.
The Veeam Data Platform offers a variety of restoration options to ensure data resilience and recovery
across different environments. Here are some options:
VM Recovery: Cross-Platform Recovery:
This allows to restore entire Supports recovery across
virtual machines to different data multiple platforms including
protection environments such as VMware, Hyper-V, AWS, Azure,
VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Azure, and Google Cloud.
and Amazon EC2.
Disk Recovery: Quick Rollback:
Recover and export Allows for fast recovery by
disks from backups. only restoring the changed
blocks since the last backup.
Item Recovery: Cloud Platforms:
This includes the recovery of VM Provides comprehensive restore
files, guest OS files and folders, options for major public clouds,
and application items. with specific steps for restoring
Amazon EC2 instances and
Microsoft Azure VMs.
File-Level Restore: Orchestration at-scale
Enables granular recovery and Veeam Support:
of individual files Large scale recoveries
and folders from backups. can be orchestrated
for Veeam Data Platform
Premium users.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Decision to Pay the Ransom
A decision of whether to pay the ransom, should be based on
a full assessment of potential impacts, including:
Life and safety impact
Operational impact
Financial impact
Sales impact
End user or customer impact
Reputation impact
Length of time to recover
In industries like healthcare, the decision could be a matter of
life or safety. Government and public-school systems are also
frequent targets because of the impact to end users.
Pay the ransom only after ensuring everything is already
contained and secured. Exhaust all backup recovery options first.
Notify law enforcement and comply with industry regulations.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Professional Expert
Incident Response
During a ransomware event, expert incident response is critical
to containing the threat, minimizing disruption, and informing
critical decisions. Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)
firms identify attack vectors, assess compromise scope, and
restore systems while preserving forensic evidence. Ransomware
negotiators engage with threat actors, analyze demands, and
advise on payment strategies, leveraging intelligence to reduce
financial and reputational impact.
Experts like Coveware by Veeam first conduct a rapid impact
assessment to scope the breach, identify affected systems,
and forecast outcomes — key to shaping response strategy
and mitigating risk. Forensic analysis follows, identifying attack
methods, executed actions, and suspicious activity. Threat actor
attribution using tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) helps
predict escalation risks, assess data exfiltration, and ensure
compliance with sanctions and regulatory restrictions, reducing
legal and financial exposure.
Encryption verification, via Recon, determines the integrity of
the ransomware, evaluating potential recovery options such as
decryptor availability or exploitable weaknesses before entering
negotiations. Employing world-class reverse engineers further
enhances recovery efforts by assessing encryption integrity and
assisting with decryption when possible, helping organizations
restore operations with confidence.
Negotiation serves strategic purposes beyond ransom discussions,
providing intelligence on exfiltrated data, decryption capabilities,
and adversary intent. Even without payment, it can buy time for
system restoration, forensic analysis, and regulatory reporting.
Experienced negotiators leverage prior engagements with threat
groups to assess claim credibility, push for concessions, and
determine if a threat actor is likely to provide a working decryptor
or honor data suppression.
An effective ransomware response hinges on rapid assessment,
forensic analysis, and strategic negotiation. By leveraging prior
case experience, forensic tooling, and adversary insights, experts
help organizations make informed decisions while mitigating risk.
Coveware by Veeam provides the expertise to manage the crisis,
restore operations, and support recovery with confidence.
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
Ransomware Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide
Final Thoughts About Veeam Software
Veeam®, the #1 global market leader
After experiencing a ransomware attack, it is crucial to
in data resilience, believes every
document the lessons learned. This process allows for business should be able to bounce
continuous improvement of processes, updating plans, and forward after a disruption with
refining procedures. Sharing these insights is equally important. the confidence and control of all
their data whenever and wherever
By disseminating information internally and externally they need it. Veeam calls this radical
through whitepapers, blogs, webinars, and collaborating resilience, and we’re obsessed with
with cybersecurity organizations, benefits everyone. creating innovative ways to help our
customers achieve it. Veeam solutions
The cybersecurity landscape offers a wide range of tools and are purpose-built for powering data
software designed to provide multiple layers of protection. resilience by providing data backup,
data recovery, data portability, data
Utilizing security tooling, implementing multi-factor authentication
security, and data intelligence. With
(MFA), and adhering to the principle of least privilege are Veeam, IT and security leaders rest
essential strategies to prevent attacks. Even if an organization easy knowing that their apps and data
is compromised, these measures can prevent lateral movement are protected and always available
across their cloud, virtual, physical,
within networks and systems. Lateral movement involves finding SaaS, and Kubernetes environments.
the optimal path or location to execute an attack, particularly Headquartered in Seattle with
concerning encryption, command & control, and data offices in more than 30 countries,
exfiltration techniques. Veeam protects over 550,000
customers worldwide, including 68%
The assistance of professional incident response experts makes of the Global 2000, that trust Veeam
to keep their businesses running.
a difference. The organization’s finances and reputation are
Radical resilience starts with Veeam.
a stake, bring the experts onboard. Learn more at www.veeam.com
or follow Veeam on LinkedIn
Finally, organizations must test their plans and incident response @veeam-software and X @veeam.
procedures, as well as the recovery of backups, is vital to ensure
preparedness and resilience against future attacks.
Learn more: veeam.com
© 2025 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 02032025
