Ransomware, today, is growing at an impeccable rate. The malware is becoming stronger and more vigorous each time, with the advancements in technology and innovative techniques, that it has become incredibly difficult for organizations and individuals to protect themselves from the blisteringly spreading virus.
In 2017 alone, 100 new ransomware variants were released into the computer systems. According to statistics, a 36% increase was witnessed in ransomware attacks worldwide year over year.
Emerging as one of the greatest cyber threats, ransomware is incessantly on the rise, plaguing thousands of entities. There is no organization, municipality, corporation, or even an individual who could claim themselves to be secure from this epidemic. Researchers claim that in 2021, every 11 seconds, a new organization will fall victim to a ransomware attack.
In fact, according to cybercriminals, the larger and more significant role an organization has, the more likely it is to be targeted by the extortionists. Ransomware recovery is highly costly and disruptive for the organization as digital dependency has risen tremendously.
There has been a constant upsurge in ransomware attacks, which continue to have detrimental effects on the victim organizations, accounting not just to monetary losses, but the operational activities are also massively impacted.
To elevate their chances of triumph, the attackers are diligently working to refine their techniques of attacks such as automated attacks, designing them with immense sophistication, thereby minimizing the chances for the criminals to be detected. These automated attacks are quickly able to take control of and infect the environment, spreading rapidly through the entire system, thereby contaminating multiple systems. In such cases, ransomware recovery proves even more intense and arduous.
Moreover, another growing concern that has created an alarming situation for the target entities is the increased collaboration among hackers, which ultimately results in more powerful and stronger attacks. They are able to infect ransomware in the systems more easily without much prior research about the data, making the attacks even more targeted towards the entities. The combined effort maximizes specialization in different aspects, making the attacks even more complex to deal with.
Hackers try to find victims with the highest value of data, increasing the chances of them to pay much higher amounts as ransom. They encrypt the official data of the organizations, threatening to release the stolen data if the ransom is not paid in due course, leaving the victim with no choice.
Even though cybersecurity officials are strictly against the idea of paying the ransom to decrypt the data, many organizations resort to it as the only option for ransomware recovery. This instigates the hackers further, providing them with the surety that the victims are highly likely to pay, leading them to demand high values for ransom and constantly devising strategies for more attacks, putting organizations under persistent threat.
