Yandex Cloud Restores 97.16% of Customer Data After Attacks

Backups now on by default

The incident has changed how the platform handles backups. Previously, customers had to switch backup on themselves. Now it is enabled by default when new virtual machines are created, on the same terms as before. Users can opt out, but the company calls backup the basic way to reduce risk in unforeseen circumstances.

Engineers are also continuing to spread Yandex Cloud's computing resources across new, independent locations in different regions of Russia, and the number of locations will keep growing. Earlier, part of the customer data and related services was moved to a new location that went live on 23 October, with access reopening in stages. Customers regained core features, including creating virtual machines and databases, cyber-threat protection services and AI tools.

Supercomputers and Yandex 360

Yandex also said its supercomputers Lyapunov, Galushkin and Chervonenkis were not damaged. All three were moved out of their former locations and are being set up as standalone clusters at new sites. Once running, they will rejoin the infrastructure behind Yandex services and continue to be used to train foundation language models.

On 20 October the company said it was still restoring full functionality of Yandex 360, while core features such as Mail, Telemost video meetings, Documents and Calendar kept working normally. Some files on Yandex Disk became unavailable: they appear in the interface but cannot be downloaded, and some lost previews. Yandex deliberately limited part of Yandex 360, including Disk, to reduce load on the infrastructure.

Russia's digital minister Maksut Shadaev said the ministry helped Yandex find extra sites to move key systems after the attack, and that the remaining systems are being moved to third-party capacity. Yandex strategic marketing director Andrey Sebrant said in October that the outage was more serious than the single-data-center loss scenario the company regularly rehearses, and that other companies in the industry are helping with recovery.