In a September 9, 2021 article written in CyberScoop, National Cyber Director Chris Inglis feels that we are not out of the woods yet as the activity from Ransomware operations have dropped off a little.
Earlier this summer every time you turned on the news there was another report about the Colonial Pipeline hack, the JBS meat packaging plant hack and not to mention the countless amounts of hospitals all being forced to shutdown and/or pay the ransoms to gain control of their systems again.
2020 Ransomware Stats
51% of businesses were targeted by ransomware.
There was a 40% surge in global ransomware, reaching 7 million hits.
By the end of 2020, ransomware costs reached $20 billion for all businesses.
The average ransomware payout demand was $233,817in Q3 2020.
1 in 5 Small businesses were targeted by ransomware attacks.
As of May 25, 2021 - 82 ransomware attacks targeted the healthcare sector alone this year.
Mr. Inglis also felt that even though the policy of the United States is NOT to pay Ransoms, he feels that in certain situations you can not avoid a Ransom payment if you are perhaps a hospital and patient lives are dependent on those compromised systems.
While it is true that the bad actors are hibernating and waiting for the right opportunity to come back. It is important to take advantage of this time to develop a plan on how to not become a statistic in the next report on Ransomware hacks.
The Healthcare sector seems to be the new favorite target of Ransomware attacks because of the sense of urgency needed for the healthcare operation to get back to saving lives rather than worrying about not paying a ransom. You have to remember the attackers like to go for the easy targets first.