Ransomware attacks increased 64% YoY between August 2020 and July 2021

Ransomware assaults grew 64 per cent year-on-year between August 2020 and July 2021, in accordance with a report from the cybersecurity agency Barracuda.

Barracuda’s researchers, analysed 121 ransomware incidents between August 2020 and July 2021 and recognized a 64 per cent YoY enhance in assaults.

A majority of those assaults had been carried out by a “handful of high-profile ransomware gangs,” the report stated. Ransomware gang, Revil, accounted for 19 per cent of the assaults whereas a brand new ransomware pressure, DarkSide, brought about 8 per cent of the assaults.

The analysis additional discovered that attackers have been closely focusing on municipalities, well being care, and training. Assaults on different companies have additionally witnessed a surge.

Assaults on companies, comparable to infrastructure, journey, monetary companies, and different companies, made up 57 per cent of all ransomware assaults between August 2020 and July 2021, up from 18 per cent as famous in Barracuda Community’s 2020 research. In the meantime, infrastructure-related companies account for 10 per cent of all of the assaults.

Additionally see: Indian PC house customers have a 28% probability of encountering cyber threats on their gadget: Report

“Actually, ransomware assaults are shortly evolving to software program provide chain assaults, which attain extra companies in a single try,” the report stated.

As cyber criminals stage up their techniques, their assault patterns have additionally been evolving. Attackers are discovering methods to steal credentials by phishing assaults, which can be utilized to problem the net purposes utilized by the sufferer.

As soon as the appliance has been compromised, the attacker can then introduce ransomware and different malware into the system which has the potential to contaminate the community as properly the appliance customers.

“On a number of events previously yr, attackers exploited an utility vulnerability to achieve management of the appliance infrastructure and finally goal essentially the most useful knowledge to encrypt,” the report added.

Growing calls for

Whereas analysing the ransom fee developments previously years, Barracuda researchers witnessed a major spike within the quantity. The typical ransom being demanded per incident is over $10 million. In 18 per cent of the incidents, the ransom demand was lower than $10 million whereas in 30 per cent of the incidents, the demand had been greater than $30 million.

Nonetheless, there have additionally been a number of situations of victims decreasing ransom funds by deploying negotiation techniques, as per the report.

Murali Urs, Nation Supervisor, Barracuda Networks India, stated, “Ransomware criminals have refined their techniques to create a double extortion scheme. The preliminary steps in direction of safeguarding an organisation from any attainable ransomware assault contain assuming vulnerability and setting a aim of not paying the ransom.”

“As soon as that has been taken care of, it’s essential to implement anti-phishing capabilities in e-mail and different collaboration instruments, and constantly prepare your customers for e-mail safety consciousness. Corporations must also safe their SaaS (software program as a service) purposes and infrastructure entry factors by implementing Zero Belief Entry. Lastly, it’s essential to remain put with a safe knowledge safety answer that may determine your essential knowledge belongings and implement catastrophe and restoration capabilities. That approach organisations can confidently put their foot down towards the ransomware criminals,” added Urs.