Cybercrime is the greatest threat to every company in the world, with cyber criminals now doubling down on ransomware attacks, deploying more sophisticated campaigns at a time when remote working is already creating additional security challenges for businesses and its impact is reflected in the numbers.
Based on the latest Ransomware statistics, cybersecurity experts and researchers frequently find evidence suggesting the overall decrease in ransomware as hackers narrow their targets. The frightening part of their research however suggests that even though the overall number of outright victims are in decline, ransomware attacks have become more devastating to those affected1.
In this infographic, you can see just how large the global impact of Ransomware on businesses are and how hackers use highly targeted phishing emails as their point of entry. For example, did you know that 67% of all ransomware infections started with a phishing email?
Check out the infographic to learn more about the latest wave of ransomware attacks and how it has become more targeted.
Why modern ransomware remains backup data’s top threat?
According to the FBI, backup is the most important defense for any organization against ransomware2. Having a recent backup to restore from could prevent a ransomware attack from crippling your organization.
Hackers are criminals, but they need to pay the bills like everyone else, and ransomware offers them the reliably they need. To achieve this level of income reliability, hackers need to remove any obstacle preventing their ability to achieve success. In other words, your ability to recover from your backups and any chance you might have to avoid paying their ransom.
In fact, most modern ransomware attacks target backup systems when they encrypt endpoint data to prevent recovery. To defend against ransomware, you first need to remove it from the devices, which backup cannot accomplish. Additionally, legacy backup cannot determine if data is encrypted or not, so it will backup data encrypted by ransomware. Or even worse, to improve their odds, modern ransomware also includes data theft, aside from encryption. Criminals opting for a modern ransomware approach will steal as many sensitive files as they can and threaten to release the information online, unless the demands are met. This approach came as the result of the increasing use of backup solutions, as businesses started restoring their data and stopped paying the ransom.
Did you know Asigra can scan for malware during backup and restore? Watch the video.
The onslaught of ransomware has even caused some enterprises to deploy offline tape-backup as a defensive measure against malware. Unfortunately, tape-back solutions are costly, slow and labor-intensive, making them suitable for only the largest of organizations with big budgets and IT teams.
Use The Right Tool For The Job
Without question, backup is always recommended for preserving data in the case of disasters, data corruption or accidental deletions. But backup was never designed to protect against cybercrime, so Asigra integrated malware-aware prevention right into our backup software. This enables IT teams to monitor, detect and isolate malware threats with live scanning during both backup and restores. This simply adds another layer to boost your existing security stack to prevent advanced and costly Ransomware threats such as Attack-Loop penetrating your backups repositories. Contact us to learn more about Asigra’s Cyber Prevention for Backup.
Sources:
(1) WatchGuard: https://www.watchguard.com/wgrd-resource-center/security-report-q4-2020.
