By Danny Palmer – Ransomware attacks have become more commonplace than payment card theft incidents for the first time, as cyber criminals alter how they go about their malicious operations in an effort to gain the biggest financial reward for the least amount of effort.

Analysis of more than a trillion security events over the past year and hundreds of breach investigations by researchers at cybersecurity company Trustwave found that ransomware attacks have become the most common security incident.

Almost one in five – 18% – of incidents throughout 2019 involved ransomware attacks, where organisations found part or all of their environment compromised by network encrypting malware – and then faced a financial demand from hackers to regain access to the data.

The number of ransomware incidents quadrupled when compared with the previous year and it now means that ransomware attacks are more common that payment card and financial data breaches for the first time. Incidents involving stolen bank account details and credit card information accounted for 17% of incidents during 2019. Read On: