More than a quarter of Irish organisations experienced a cyber attack last year, according to the findings of a new survey.
The research commissioned by Logicalis Ireland in association with IBM reveals that of the businesses that were attacked, 40% were targeted by malware and 34% by phishing.
29% of the businesses impacted said it took about a week to recover, while 27% said it took a month and 24% said their recovery is ongoing.
The survey which was carried out among 100 IT decision-makers in Ireland found that exposure to cyber threats increased during the pandemic, for more than three quarters of organisations.
As a result - 70% of those surveyed said they will increase their IT budgets for the coming year, to account for better security, back-up and disaster recovery solutions.
On a more positive note, 88% of organisations said high-profile incidents had made company management more aware of threats to their business.
In terms of response, over half strongly agreed it was a waste of time to negotiate with hackers, while almost 60% strongly disagreed that IT departments should keep a bitcoin fund for dealing with ransomware attacks.
As for the most popular measures for protecting data, multi-cloud solutions came out top.
Single cloud solutions and off-premise physical backup finished off the top three measures.
"It has been a time of unprecedented change for Irish businesses," said Patrick Jordan, Chief Revenue Officer for Logicalis UK & Ireland.
"As workforces and operations became remote, the threat landscape shifted and arguably expanded with more locations to cover, more devices to protect and more risks to combat," he added.
Mr Jordan said this led to an intensification of the focus and pressure on technology solutions and IT support within organisations.
"This will only continue as we settle into the new way of hybrid working and invest in the tools to not only support but secure this."
