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Yesterday it was a hospital system in Mississippi. Tomorrow it could be your clinics, branches, or offices in Central Texas.
On February 20, 2026, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) was hit with a ransomware attack serious enough to shut down roughly 36 clinics across the state and cancel elective procedures. Staff suddenly found themselves back in the world of paper charts, phone calls, and manual workarounds while IT teams scrambled behind the scenes to contain the damage and restore systems. Hospitals and emergency rooms stayed open, but under strain. Investigations are still underway into the full impact and whether patient data was exposed. (AP News report)
For the people on the ground, it wasn’t a headline. It was a bad day that turned into an operational crisis.
For Central Texas leaders, it’s a preview.
If you woke up tomorrow to a message that said, “We’ve had to close multiple locations because of ransomware,” what would actually happen inside your organization over the next 24–72 hours?
- Would phones light up with angry customers and patients?
- Would your team know who is in charge of decisions?
- Would you be able to access the data and systems that drive revenue?
Those aren’t theoretical questions anymore. They’re the new cost of doing business in a world where attackers can jump from one unpatched firewall or stolen password to a multi-site outage overnight.
The Real Problem: Assumptions Masquerading as a Plan
Most leaders I talk to in Central Texas are not ignoring cybersecurity. They’ve invested in antivirus, firewalls, maybe even a security awareness platform. Many will tell you, “We have backups,” or “Our IT guy has us covered.”
But when I follow up with a simple question – “When was the last time you restored those backups and timed how long it took to get a critical system usable again?” – the room tends to get very quiet.
That’s the real problem.
Ransomware is brutal because it attacks the exact things that keep your business moving:
- Electronic health records and practice management systems
- Line-of-business applications and ERPs
- File shares with contracts, designs, and financials
- Email and collaboration tools
If those are locked, it doesn’t matter how many AI tools you’ve deployed, how slick your new marketing campaign is, or how many dashboards your team can generate.
And that’s another trap leaders are facing in 2026: the world is buzzing about AI, Copilot, and “agentic” platforms that promise to automate entire workflows. Microsoft is positioning Copilot as the new productivity layer across Windows 11 and Microsoft 365. Marketing teams everywhere are pushing for hyper-personalization and AI-written everything.
Those can be fantastic tools. At CTTS, we’re excited about responsible AI because it can remove friction for real people.
But none of that helps you if the foundation isn’t resilient. A Copilot that can summarize a document is useless if the document – and the server it lives on – are encrypted behind a ransom note.
The Guide: A Local Team That’s Been in the Trenches
I’m Josh, President & CEO of CTTS here in Central Texas. For more than two decades, our team has walked alongside organizations through both tabletop exercises and actual incidents.
What we’ve seen, over and over, is that the organizations who fare best after a cyber event are not necessarily the ones with the most expensive tools. They’re the ones who:
- Took the time to write a simple, clear plan
- Practiced what they would do under pressure
- Verified that their backups and security basics actually worked
They didn’t wait for a perfect, 50-page playbook. They started with a 1–2 page ransomware response checklist and built from there.
A Simple 3-Step Plan for Central Texas Leaders
If you’re responsible for a business, nonprofit, clinic, or school in Central Texas, here’s a straightforward path you can start on this quarter.
1. Write a One-Page Ransomware Playbook
This doesn’t need to be fancy. It just has to be clear.
- Who do we call first? List names and direct numbers – internal and external.
- Who has authority to shut things down? Decide in advance who can take systems offline, approve spending, or talk to the media.
- How will we communicate if email and chat are offline? Capture backup communication channels such as phone trees, SMS lists, or an alternate messaging platform.
You can build this into a Word doc, OneNote page, or Teams wiki – and yes, Copilot can help tidy up the wording once the content exists. But the thinking needs to come from your leadership team.
2. Prove Your Backups Actually Work
Backups you’ve never restored are a “feeling,” not a strategy.
- Pick one mission-critical system – the one you absolutely cannot operate without.
- Schedule a test restore at least quarterly.
- Time how long it takes to get that system to a usable state.
- Document the steps and refine them each time.
If it takes two days to get that system back in a lab environment, you now have reality-based information to work with. That’s far better than finding out in the middle of a crisis that no one remembers how the backup software is configured.
3. Close the Easy Doors
Attackers generally go after the lowest-hanging fruit first. You can raise the bar significantly with a few disciplined habits:
- Turn on multifactor authentication (MFA)Â everywhere you can.
- Keep servers, firewalls, and endpoints patched on a predictable schedule.
- Train your people to pause before clicking the “too urgent” email asking them to open an attachment or log in to fix an issue.
These are not glamorous projects, but they dramatically reduce your odds of becoming the next headline.
Success vs. Failure: What’s at Stake
When UMMC had to close dozens of clinics, they lost more than a day of appointments. They lost momentum, trust, and revenue – even as their teams worked around the clock to recover.
For a Central Texas organization, a similar outage could mean:
- Days or weeks of lost billings
- Frustrated customers or patients who decide to go elsewhere
- Staff burnout as they juggle manual processes and long hours
- Potential regulatory or legal exposure if sensitive data is involved
On the other hand, organizations that prepare in advance experience something very different:
- Shorter outages and faster return to normal operations
- Leaders who can communicate calmly because they’re following a plan
- Teams who know what’s expected of them
- Customers who notice that, even in a crisis, you stayed transparent and responsive
That’s the difference between a bad day and a defining event.
Your Next Step
If you’re a Central Texas leader and you don’t have a written ransomware plan yet, you don’t need to start from a blank page.
At CTTS, we’ve created a simple one-page checklist we walk through with clients when we facilitate ransomware tabletop exercises. It’s practical, plain-English, and designed for real-world use – not just compliance.
If you’d like a copy, here’s your next step:
- On LinkedIn, ask people to DM you with the word PLAN.
- Or, on the blog version, invite readers to reach out through the website and mention this article – you’ll share the checklist and talk through how it applies to their environment.
You can’t control when the next UMMC-style headline will hit the news. But you can decide how prepared your organization will be when it’s your phones that start ringing.
And they don’t have to figure it out alone – CTTS is here to help Central Texas businesses turn cybersecurity from a vague worry into a practical, lived-out plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What should be included in a one-page ransomware response plan?
A practical ransomware response plan should clearly outline who to contact first, who has decision-making authority, and how your organization will communicate if email and chat systems are unavailable. It should also document immediate containment steps and identify your most mission-critical systems. The goal is clarity under pressure, not complexity.
2. How often should we test our backups to protect against ransomware?
Backups should be tested at least quarterly by performing an actual restore of a mission-critical system. This allows you to measure how long recovery takes, identify gaps in the process, and ensure your backup strategy works in real-world conditions. Untested backups create false confidence and increase risk during an incident.
3. Why is focusing on recovery just as important as prevention?
Even with strong cybersecurity tools in place, no organization is immune to risk. Ransomware often exploits a single overlooked vulnerability. Organizations that recover fastest are those that have practiced their response, validated their backups, and clarified leadership roles in advance. Recovery speed often determines whether an incident becomes a temporary disruption or a long-term crisis.
Contact CTTS today for IT support and managed services in Austin, TX. Let us handle your IT so you can focus on growing your business. Visit CTTSonline.com or call us at (512) 388-5559 to get started!