The single biggest cybersecurity threat to both business and government organizations = Ransomware.
Cybersecurity Insiders recently surveyed 380,000 members of the Information Security Community to gather insights, reveal the latest ransomware trends, and provide guidance on effectively addressing the ransomware threat.
Here are key findings from the report:
- Ransomware is the fastest growing security threat, perceived as a moderate or extreme threat by 80% of cybersecurity professionals.
- 75% of organizations affected by ransomware experienced up to five attacks in the last 12 months alone, 25% experienced 6 or more attacks.
- 79% predict ransomware to become a larger threat over the next 12 months. Only a small fraction of respondents say they would pay the ransom or negotiate with the attackers.
- 59% of organizations are either not confident at all or only slightly to moderately confident in their ransomware defense.
- Email and web use represent the most common ransomware infection vectors with employees opening malicious email attachments (73%), responding to a phishing email (54%) or visiting a compromised website (28%).
- The information most at risk from ransomware attacks is financial data (62%) followed by customer information (61%).
- From a solution perspective, the majority of identified ransomware attacks were detected through endpoint security tools (83%), email and web gateways (64%), and intrusion detection systems (46%).
- Security professionals rank user awareness training the most effective tactic to prevent and block ransomware (77%) followed by endpoint security solutions (73%), and patching of operating systems (72%) as preventive approaches to ransomware threats.
- Data backup and recovery (74%) is by far as the most effective solution to respond to a successful ransomware attack. 96% of respondents confirm they have a data backup and recovery strategy in place. A majority of 54% say they could recover from a successful ransomware attack within a day, while 39% estimate it will take more than one day to a few weeks to recover.
- Speed of recovery is absolutely mission-critical as business cost escalates with every hour the business cannot fully operate, causing system downtime (41%) and productivity loss (39%).
- Today’s main obstacles to stronger ransomware defense are all about resources and staying current on the latest ransomware exploits: lack of budget (52%), dealing with evolving sophistication of attacks (42%), and lack of human resources (33%). The silver lining: 60% of organizations expect their budget for ransomware security to increase.
