Yandex Says About 3% of Cloud Customer Data Permanently Lost After Drone Strikes

Russian tech company Yandex said on Tuesday that it has restored access to around 97% of the cloud customer data affected by Ukrainian drone strikes on its data centers last month. The remaining 3% has been permanently lost, a sign of how the war can reach Russia's digital infrastructure.

In a press release, the company blamed the losses on critical damage to equipment and on the fact that some cloud customers had not maintained external backups on the platform.

What happened in October

Ukrainian drones attacked several Yandex data centers between October 8 and 11. The disruption hit ride-hailing apps, car-sharing services, food delivery and online maps, as well as email, banking and streaming platforms. Government agencies and private firms whose products rely on Yandex infrastructure were also affected. The company later reported that key features had been restored for users and businesses, but its engineers were still working to bring all services back online.

Steps to prevent a repeat

Yandex said customers who had enabled automated backup features suffered no data loss at all. To guard against future disruptions, the company has updated its platform so that automatic data backups are switched on by default for all new virtual cloud servers.

Engineers are also working to spread computing workloads across a broader, more decentralized network of data facilities throughout Russia, in order to reduce dependence on single locations.

Yandex previously confirmed that its specialized supercomputers at two of the targeted facilities came through the attacks undamaged and have since been moved to secure alternative sites.