Surge of Ransomware

Ransomware has become an intolerable situation in many nations. The hard truth
about ransomware is that knowing more about the threat doesn’t easily translate to a
decreased impact. It continues to grow, hitting consumers and businesses hard. Over
the past few months (and years), we have seen an increase in ransomware attacks.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that typically infects your machine or

device and renders the device (or the data on the device) unusable until a ransom is
paid. It is a growing scourge, but recent months have seen a growing sophistication
and level of innovation in this slice of the cybercrime underbelly.

Some ransomware not only stops you from gaining access to your data, but also
threatens with well-established public/private key cryptography, so that the only way
to recover the files is to either pay the ransom or restore files from backups.

Unless the ransom is paid, it will upload your data to the public Internet. Although, the
ransom demand is paid, the attacker may not always provide the decryption keys to
restore access. The latest variants of ransomware can also encrypt entire websites, any
backup data you may hold, and even system files in your computer.

Emerging trends in ransomware

Today’s ransomware gangs are more dangerous and prolific than ever before. Worse,
they keep moving the goalposts with new techniques and approaches as the attacks
prove to be increasingly lucrative.

The reason for the growth is obvious. Recent report shows that ransomware incidents
resulted in damages of between $1 million and $5 million for 35 percent of the
organizations.
Ransomware operations were the predominant attack vector in 2020, with an
unprecedented number of different variants and actors popping up on a weekly basis.
In 2021, researchers expect to see a continued wave of attacks from both malware
operators themselves and from ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operators, who
provide access to ransomware toolsets in return for a percentage of the victim’s
ransom.

Along with technical changes, ransomware gangs are also switching up their
techniques, tactics and procedures (TTPs) to improve their extortion operations.

Over 80
Over 50
Percent
Percent
With Cymulate DMGT were able to measure risk reduction, optimize security control
configurations, and were able to convey measurable improvement to company
executives, the Audit & Risk Committee of the Board.