Half of organisations that cough up after being subject to ransonware attacks never get their data back, according to a new report.
Published in the latest cyber threat report by research firm Cyber Edge Group, the findings suggest that while half never see their data again after paying ransoms, the other half see a complete data loss.
“In 2017, 55 per cent of our respondents’ organisations were victimised by ransomware. Of those victims that refused to pay the ransom (61 per cent), the vast majority (87 per cent) recovered their data from backups,” explained Steve Piper, CEO of CyberEdge Group.
“This just underscores how important it is to incorporate a sensible data backup strategy as part of an organisation’s cyber threat defence strategy.”
The report is based on the responses of 1,200 IT security decision makers from 17 countries around the world, including the UK. There’s also 19 industry sectors included.
However, it’s not all bad news. The report established that, for the first time in five years, the proportion of organisations affected by a successful cyber attack decreased: from 79 per cent in 2016 to 77 per cent in 2017. And even more positively, the number of organisations victimised by six or more successful attacks fell from 33 per cent to 27 per cent.
Security firm Imperva’s CTO, Terry Ray, added that because ransom payment is no guarantee that data will be restored, companies need to stop ransomware attacks from the very beginning, by encrypting the data before its stored and theft can take place.
“The best way to prevent an attack is to immediately detect ransomware file access behaviours before the ransomware spreads across the network and encrypts file servers. Once detected, you can quarantine impacted users, devices and systems,” he said.
To fully protect your Office 365 data against a Ranswonware attack you need Office 365 SaaS Protection
Source: V3