What is Ransomware
Ransomware is malware that employs encryption to hold a victim’s information at ransom. A user or organization’s critical data is encrypted so that they cannot access files, databases, or applications. A ransom is then demanded to provide access. Ransomware is often designed to spread across a network and target database and file servers, and can thus quickly paralyze an entire organization. It is a growing threat, generating billions of dollars in payments to cybercriminals and inflicting significant damage and expenses for businesses and governmental organizations.
In this article we are going to study one of the most authoritative global reports on ransomware. Read On!
About Sophos
Sophos Group, a Private Limited Company, is a British security software and hardware company. Sophos develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security, email security, mobile security and unified threat management. Sophos is primarily focused on providing security software to 100- to 5,000-seat organizations.
Sophos’ annual ransomware survey delivers fresh new insights into the experiences of mid-sized organizations across the globe. It explores the prevalence of attacks, as well as the impact of those attacks on victims, including year-on-year trends. This year, for the first time, the survey also reveals the actual ransom payments made by victims, as well as the proportion of data victims were able to recover after they had paid.
About the survey
Sophos commissioned independent research house Vanson Bourne to survey 5,400 IT decision makers across 30 countries. The survey was conducted in January and February 2021.
As in previous years, 50% of the respondents in each country came from organizations with 100 to 1,000 employees, and 50% from organizations with 1,001 to 5,000 employees. Respondents also came from a wide range of sectors.
Key findings
- India is one among most affected countries with respect to ransomware attacks.
- India tops list of top 30 countries for ransomware attacks.
- 68 percent of Indian organisations were hit by ransomware in last 12 months. Though, this number is less than 82 percent, reported in 2020 report.
- 72 percent of Indian organisations admitted, data was encrypted in most significant ransomware attack.
- There is overall drop in attacks. However, attacker’s behaviour has changed at some places. At Sophos, it was reported, attackers were switching to more targeted attacks which include human hands-on keyboard hacking so as to bypass organisation’s defences.
- 67 per cent of Indian organisations, whose data was encrypted, paid ransom to recover as opposed to global average of 32 percent.
- 86 per cent of Indian organisations are of view that, cyberattacks are now too complex for their own IT team to handle.
Impact of attack
Ransomware attacks has significant financial repercussions. Survey highlights, average total cost of recovery from a ransomware attack was more than double in a year. It increased from $7,61,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021 across the world. However, In India, recovery cost from tripled in a year, $1.1 million in 2020 to $3.38 in 2021.
YLCC would like to thank Riya Gupta for her valuable inputs in this article.
