TRENDING
Fleming Shi , CTO , Barracuda and demand payment in exchange for a promise to not publish or sell the data to other criminals . Since criminals cannot be trusted , victims who pay are often contacted several months later and asked for another payment to keep the stolen data secret . Some ransomware criminals will accept payment but sell the data anyway .
Barracuda researchers identified and analyzed 121 ransomware incidents that occurred between August 2020 and July 2021 and saw a 64 % increase in attacks , year over year .
Cybercriminals are still heavily targeting municipalities , health care and education but attacks on other businesses are surging :
• Attacks on corporations , such as infrastructure , travel , financial services and other businesses made up 57 % of all ransomware attacks between August 2020 and July 2021 , up from just 18 % in the 2020 study .
• Infrastructure-related businesses account for 10 % of all the attacks the company studied .
• The ransom amount is increasing dramatically and now the average ransom ask per incident is over US $ 10 million . A total of 8 % of the incidents
The first step in taking on ransomware is assuming that you will be victimized – it ’ s just a matter of when .
had a ransom ask less than US $ 10 million and 14 % of the incidents had a ransom ask greater than US $ 30 million .
• Ransomware attacks are becoming pervasive across the globe . Just under half ( 44 %) of the attacks in the past 12 months hit US organizations . In comparison , 30 % of the incidents happened in EMEA , 11 % were in Asia Pacific countries , 10 % were in South America and 8 % were in Canada and Mexico .
Ransomware attack patterns are evolving as well .
Fleming Shi , CTO , Barracuda , said : “ Attackers often start with small organizations that are connected to the larger targets and then work their way up . All of us in the security industry have an obligation to turn sophisticated technology into products and services that can be easily consumed by customers .”
Instead of simply relying on malicious links and attachments to deliver ransomware , cybercriminals are leveling up their tactics .
First , attackers will find ways to steal credentials through phishing attacks and then they will use the stolen credentials to challenge the web applications used by the victim . Once the application has been compromised , the attacker can introduce ransomware and other malware into the system . This can go on to infect your network as well as users of your application .
It ’ s important to note that web applications have many forms , including those enabling users to work from home . A web portal for a segment of your IT
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