An Overview of the Global Impact of Ransomware Attacks
On December 12th, 2022, there was a cyberattack in the Swedish municipalities of Borgholm and Mörbylånga that rendered a range of critical services from both municipalities unavailable. Although the nature of the intrusion is still undisclosed, it seems to be part of a wider trend of global ransomware attacks.
On January 10th, the Royal Mail detected a cyber incident affecting delivery and collection across the UK.
In even more recent news, the city of Oakland has declared a local state of emergency because of a ransomware attack that forced the city to take all its IT systems offline on February 8th.
But what is a ransomware attack, who are the targeted groups, and how can organizations protect themselves?
Ransomware is malicious software that encrypts a company’s data, preventing access to data until the ransom payment is paid and a decryptor is released.
In 2021 there were 623.3 million ransomware attacks worldwide, an increase of 105% over 2020 figures. Most of these targeted ransomware attacks have been on the rise since the shift to remote and hybrid work.
However, in 2022, the volume of ransomware attacks dropped 23%. As organizations feel this indicates cybersecurity prevention is helping prevent these crimes, the crimes are evolving into new levels.
Most ransomware groups are opting for the double-extortion model, threatening to expose the compromised data, for additional leverage to collect ransom payments. These high profile attacks bring more sophistication of modern cyber-attacks imposing new dangers to both organizations and individuals. Read On:
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