Case Study: Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research achieves rapid ransomware recovery and restores 80% of encrypted data with Veeam

The Polish Academy of Sciences accelerates ransomware recovery with Veeam

The Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences—supporting researchers, students and staff with more than 50 virtual machines across three physical servers—faced a major ransomware attack after a zero‑day Microsoft Exchange exploit. Attackers encrypted between 10% and 45% of file servers and about 2 TB of the institute’s 50 TB NAS backups, briefly compromising the backup environment and forcing an urgent recovery and infrastructure redesign.

Veeam deployed senior experts to triage systems, guide restoration and augment the institute’s three‑person IT team; over roughly four weeks they recovered 80% of the encrypted data and provisioned a temporary environment while the institute rebuilt systems from scratch. The institute renewed Veeam Backup Essentials, introduced an air‑gapped, three‑copy strategy including an off‑site virtual tape library, and automated daily backups—limiting disruption, reducing future ransomware risk and freeing the IT team to focus on user support.

Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research

Marek Śliwiński

IT Center Manager