88 percent of all ransomware is detected in the healthcare industry

According to the findings of a new report, companies in the healthcare industry have the most ransomware present, accounting for 88 percent of all detections in the second quarter of this year.

The report from managed security provider Solutionary shows other affected industries include education (six percent) and finance (four percent), with eight other industries combining for less than two percent of detections.

"Healthcare has been a target for ransomware campaigns because the industry has often paid ransom to retrieve vital customer data quickly. Furthermore, healthcare organizations use an abundance of systems and devices that are crucial pivot-points for an attacker, and they can even be victims of ransomware themselves," says Rob Kraus, director of research, Security Engineering Research Team at Solutionary. "The most important steps in protecting your company’s and your customers' data from the growing malicious ransomware onslaught are ensuring that you have a robust backup and recovery process, and that your security software is up-to-date and able to detect the most recent ransomware variants. As the threat continues to evolve, it will be crucial for organizations to have defined incident-response procedures and proper detective and preventive controls in place to reduce ransomware's impact".

Solutionary's researchers also identified the top attack types. Out of 11 categories, the top three -- web application, malware and application-specific attacks -- accounted for roughly 62 percent of all attacks. Threat actors focused mainly on web applications, which were the target of nearly 24 percent of all attacks.

Attacks focusing on ActiveX or Adobe products accounted for almost 48 percent of all attacks against the top five industries (retail, healthcare, education, finance and technology). The retail sector was the focus of 18 percent of all attacks during Q2 of 2016. Geographically Germany was the number-one source of all non-US-based attacks, responsible for nearly 15 percent of attacks overall.

The full quarterly threat report for Q2 2016 is available to download from the Solutionary website.

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