Some UK businesses don't know what ransomware is

More than one in ten (11 percent) of all UK organizations have never even heard of ransomware, Trend Micro claims. Another 20 percent don't know how the malware works. Yet, more than four fifths, or 82 percent to be exact, consider malware a threat.

This general lack of knowledge about ransomware best reflects in how the organizations in question think ransomware originates. A third (33 percent) of them know it comes from malicious email attachments. However, a quarter (24 percent) believe ransomware infections come from clicking a link in an email, and 14 percent think it happens if you simply browse the web.

More than two thirds (69 percent) of companies believe they will be victims of a ransomware attack in the next 12 months, and this number rises to 75 percent among companies that have already suffered such an attack.

Pretty much every company (97 percent) goes for automated back-up and recovery, and 86 percent keep an offline copy of their back-up plan. Three quarters (77 percent) have a disaster recovery plan, but just a third (33 percent) have actually tested it.

"Ransomware continues to dominate the threat landscape as organizations are unwittingly fueling the cyber-criminal underground economy", says Bharat Mistry, cybersecurity consultant at Trend Micro. "While it’s promising to see that UK organizations are preparing response plans and deploying preventative methods, a lack of understanding over how the malware actually works could make these actions redundant and is leaving organizations vulnerable to repeat attacks".

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