For British companies, ransomware attacks are becoming a virtual nightmare. The extent of ransomware shenanigans is also substantiated by the numbers mentioned in a report compiled by SonicWall, a company that deals in the development of cyber security programs.
According to SonicWall, this year they have encountered 2500 ransomware cases, making an average of 38 attacks a day. These numbers clearly demonstrate the unprecedented prevalence of ransomware attacks.
According to many experts, the reason of ransomware success is due to the highly adaptive nature of this next generation highly complex malware, making it invincible against the cyber defenses of many organizations.
This escalated targeting of businesses also indicates that the operators of these attacks are very confident that they are going to get the payment they want to remove ransomware. It is also a reported fact that businesses pay thousands of dollars on average for ransomware decryption.
The same report also suggests that some software applications are more vulnerable to ransomware attacks than the rest. For instance, most of the businesses that became the target of ransomware attacks, fell victim because of the vulnerabilities of Microsoft Office, Adobe and Edge (a web browser by Microsoft).
Even though the National Cyber Security Center strongly advised against the payment of ransom, but it seems like many organizations still prefer to pay the operators for ransomware decryption. Cyber attacks of immense scale are becoming more common as the time passes.
Last year, we witnessed how a high-level cyber security breach compromised the personal information of nearly half of the US population (Data theft from Equifax, one of the three credit reporting agencies of the US).
Security Chief of a British Security Software Company, John Shaw has given two reasons, which make businesses more prone to the threat of data breaches and ransomware attacks.
- Organisations not allocating sufficient IT time for the improvement of their cyber security
- Organisations persisting with the same old security tools and not catching up with ever-evolving cyber attacks
Both of these factors lead to a weak cyber security, giving an open invitation to ransomware attackers to inflict their vice.
