Almost 40 percent of enterprises hit by ransomware in the last year
Ransomware is one of the biggest security threats that organizations face. New research from malware prevention and removal specialist Malwarebytes across the US, Canada, UK and Germany and finds that nearly 40 percent of businesses have experienced a ransomware attack in the last year.
The study conducted by Osterman Research also reveals that of those that have fallen victim more than a third lost revenue and 20 percent had to stop business completely.
"Over the last four years, ransomware has evolved into one of the biggest cyber security threats in the wild, with instances of ransomware in exploit kits increasing 259 percent in the last five months alone. The impact on businesses around the world has been significant," says Nathan Scott, technical project manager at Malwarebytes and ransomware expert. "Until now, very few studies have examined the current prevalence and ramifications of actual ransomware incidents in the enterprise".
Among other findings are that 78 percent of all ransomware was known to come through an endpoint, and nearly half of attacks (46 percent) originated from email. Nearly 60 percent of all ransomware attacks in the enterprise demanded more than $1,000. Over 20 percent of attacks asked for more than $10,000, one percent even asked for over $150,000.
Worryingly many companies are paying the ransom, globally, more than 40 percent of victims paid up. Businesses also lose a significant amount of time with More than 60 percent of attacks taking more than 9 hours to remediate and 63 percent of respondents spending more than an entire business day trying to fix endpoints.
Healthcare and financial services were the leading industries attacked with ransomware globally, both being targeted well above the average ransomware penetration rate of 39 percent. Worryingly, 3.5 percent of respondents even say lives could be at risk because of ransomware’s debilitating effects.
To address this issue head on, Malwarebytes is announcing today, new anti-ransomware additions to its Malwarebytes Endpoint Security (MBES) platform which delivers multi-layered defense for smart endpoint protection against malware, and ransomware.
You can find out more about the findings and MBES on the company's website.
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