85 percent of organizations have suffered ransomware attacks

In the past five years 85 percent of organizations have suffered a ransomware incident, while 74 percent have had more than one.

A new report from ExtraHop based on a survey conducted by Wakefield Research shows that 77 percent of IT decision makers are very or completely confident in their company's ability to prevent or mitigate cybersecurity threats.

This confidence may not be well placed, however, as 64 percent admit that half (or more) of their cybersecurity incidents are the result of their own outdated IT security postures. These include the use of insecure and deprecated protocols, as well as growing numbers of unmanaged devices.

When it comes to the cost of ransomware 72 percent of respondents admit to paying a ransom while 42 percent of companies that suffered a ransomware attack say they paid the ransom demanded most or all of the time. On top of that, victims of ransomware report other losses including business downtime (51 percent), end-user downtime (46 percent), IP loss and brand damage (45 percent).

Top challenges in combating threats include lack of cooperation between network, security, and cloud operations teams, cited by 43 percent. Additionally, 40 percent cite a lack of investment, 39 percent the long time required to train new hires, and 35 percent inadequate or overlapping tooling.

In spite of the shift to working from home, 69 percent of respondents are still transmitting sensitive data over unencrypted HTTP connections instead of more secure HTTPS connections. Another 68 percent are still running SMBv1, the protocol that's been exploited in major attacks like WannaCry and NotPetya.

"This research highlights the discrepancies between the reality of today's sophisticated attack landscape and the overconfidence that many business leaders have in their ability to manage an attack," says Jeff Costlow, CISO at ExtraHop. "Defenders need tools that can track attacker activity across cloud, on-premises, and remote environments so they can identify and stop an attack before they can compromise the business."

You can find out more about the ransomware threat on the ExtraHop site.

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