Wow, it's one thing to see a cyberattack bring an interruption to the system, and we've come to understand that might mean some private data gets compromised, but the fact that their data stores have simply been lost and may be irrecoverable is a new wrinkle. I have to imagine there were some sort of cloud/backup solutions they could/should have been implemented but had chosen not to? 

I only know of one way to stop ransomware; prevent the software that encrypts files from being installed and executed. That requires a proactive risk assessment to detect suspicious software before any attempt to install or execute software.