Recently, various companies have started revealing about security attacks on their email servers. More than 85 percent of cyber officials claimed that their company was hit by an email attack.
Many of the attacks were accompanied by a ransomware. Companies were forced to pay a great deal of money in order to get access back to their critical data. The report found out that 12 percent of companies did agree to the ransom in order to remove ransomware while 88 percent of the companies were reluctant to do so. Moreover, the companies that agreed to pay the ransom were mostly large businesses. Small businesses may have hesitations due to financial concerns.
The report further stated that the ransomware attacks have became too strong and advanced and with the media coverage mounting pressure on companies, it was unexpected to see companies unwilling to pay ransom to remove ransomware. The report expressed optimism about this fact and was hopeful that the companies may have had reliable IT teams that might have helped them recover and backup their critical data and successfully removed ransomware without paying money.
The report also illustrated the fact that 35 percent of the company executives agreed that they were hit by a ransomware attack. The ransomware infected their files mostly through emails (75 percent) while websites was the other medium. Furthermore, 16 percent of these executives accepted the lack of proper IT infrastructure as the primary reason behind their cyber failures while 84 percent blamed their employee errors as the underlying cause.
The report also interviewed security analyst of these companies regarding ransomware removal. 46 percent of these analysts believed that anyone in their company can fall in the trap of phishing campaigns, 39 percent in executives and 15 percent in managers.
Department wise, phishing campaigns mostly targeted the finance department due to obvious reasons as the finance department holds the key to the monetary dealings of the organization. 24 percent of attacks were in finance. Sales and customer consisted of 17 percent each. Information technology, legal and HR departments were targeted the least.
