Ransomware attacks are causing more downtime than ever before
Ransomware attacks are causing more
downtime than ever before
The average number of days it takes
for organisations infected with ransomware to restore networks is now up to
over 16 days.
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Ransomware attacks are becoming more disruptive, with the amount
of downtime for organisations which fall victim to network-encrypting malware
campaigns on the rise.
According to
figures in the new Ransomware Marketplace report from
cybersecurity company Covewar, the average number of days a ransomware incident
lasts is now 16.2 days – up from 12.1 days in the third quarter of 2019.
The increased downtime has been driven by a rise in attacks
against large organisations, which often need to spend many weeks remediating
and restoring their systems.
"Enterprises must understand the magnitude of the
remediation and restoration process necessary when a ransomware attack
happens," Coveware CEO Bill Siegel told ZDNet.
"Reconnecting that backup and restoring a large amount of
data can be very time consuming. It is a huge project and frankly has to be
practiced beyond theoretical table top exercises," he added.
Ransomware has
already had a big impact in just the first month of 2020: currency exchange
provider Travelex was hit with Sodinokibi
ransomware on New Year's Eve and at the time of writing, some
of the company's online services remain offline over three
weeks on from the attack.
The report also notes that the ransom demands made by criminal
operations are on the rise, with the average ransom payment doubling in just
the space of a few months; it was $41,198 between July and September last year,
and reached $84,116 for the period between October and December.
This is once again because ransomware is proving so effective
across whole networks that the cyber criminals can make high demands, which in
many cases organisations are taking the decision to pay.
However,
organisations can go a long way to protecting themselves from falling victim to
ransomware and other cyber attacks by following a few simple security
procedures, including multi-factor authentication on
accounts across the network.
"We still see broad non-adoption of multi-factor
authentication, which would have prevented a large proportion of the attacks
from having the impact they had," said Siegel.
Organisations
should also ensure their systems are regularly updated with
relevant security patches in order to ensure that cyber
criminals can't take advantage of known vulnerabilities to
gain access to networks and distribute ransomware.