Ransomware is expected to deflate a bit next year, but hackers won’t be resting on their laurels, that’s for sure. Instead, they might just move to dronejacking, for a "variety of criminal or hacktivist purposes".

This is according to McAfee Labs, whose new report, the McAfee Labs 2017 Threats Predictions Report, identifies 14 cyber-security trends to watch in 2017.

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The Muni public transport system in San Francisco has been hit by a major ransomware attack over the weekend that left the network having to give passengers free travel.

It's estimated that around 2,000 systems have been affected by the attack, which began on Friday, including ticket machines, servers and Windows workstations.

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A new survey of over 500 businesses in the US, UK, France and Germany shows that in the last 12 months, 48 percent have fallen victim to a ransomware campaign, with 81 percent having suffered three or more attacks.

The study from endpoint security company SentinelOne reveals employee information (42 percent), financial data (41 percent) and customer information (40 percent) are the types of data most often affected by these attacks.

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We tend to think of storage as being a target when it comes to malware attacks with cyber criminals seeking to steal data or encrypt it to demand a ransom. But in fact technology can make storage part of the solution.

Hybrid storage specialist Reduxio believes innovative storage can be used to fight and defeat ransomware and malware. We spoke to Reduxio's Jacob Cherian (VP of product strategy) and Mike Grandinetti (chief marketing and corporate strategy officer) to find out how.

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A new report from Kaspersky Lab reveals that its products blocked 73,066,751 attempts to attack users with malicious attachments during the third quarter of this year.

This represents the largest amount of malicious spam since the beginning of 2014 and is a 37 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. The majority of the blocked attachments were ransomware trojan downloaders.

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Security company McAfee warns that the cybercriminals behind the Cerber ransomware have begun to target businesses as well as individuals by encrypting their databases until payment is received.

During July, those responsible for Cerber launched over 160 campaigns at 150,000 users. These attacks generated $195,000 in that month -- of which the developer behind the ransomware received $78,000. Overall it is estimated that creating and using ransomware to launch cyberattacks earns the creators of the malware and those who employ it in their attacks around $1 million to $2.5 million a year. The infosec firm Trustwave noted in 2015 that a ransomware creator could earn up to $84,000 a month just by selling their malware on the dark web.

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If your organization ever gets infected by ransomware (and there are good chances it will) it is better not to pay up because you probably won’t get your data back, even if you do pay the ransom.

This is according to a new report by security firm Kaspersky Lab, which urges organizations to instead report the incident to the authorities. It bases its conclusions on a couple of research results -- more than a third (36 percent) of organizations pay the ransom, but around 20 percent still don’t get their files back.

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We already know that ransomware is a lucrative business for the attackers. But for the victims, especially smaller businesses, it can prove devastating.

A new solution offering enterprise-class ransomware protection for small and mid sized companies is being launched by data protection specialist Datto. In the event of an attack it aims to shorten downtime, save money and reduce the impact to business, giving companies an effective and reliable alternative to paying hackers' ransoms.

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The consequences of a security breach in the healthcare sector can be severe, yet a new survey reveals that healthcare staff are among the most likely to fall victim to social engineering attacks.

The study from SecurityScorecard exposes vulnerabilities across 700 healthcare organizations including medical treatment facilities, health insurance agencies and healthcare manufacturing companies.

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Threats like ransomware means it’s more important than ever to keep your computers safe both online and off.

Emsisoft has just released Anti Malware 12, the latest version of its respected anti-malware software, and Christian Mairoll, the company’s CEO, took time to speak to me about the ever evolving threat landscape, the best ways to keep your system safe, and the benefits of paid versus free solutions.

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Ransomware is increasingly big business and more than 43 percent of malware types are used to deliver it. It can also be unwittingly spread via the use of cloud services.

To protect against the threat, cloud security company Netskope is adding ransomware detection and recovery capabilities to its Netskope Threat Protection product.

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Android users, beware. Ransomware for your favorite mobile operating system is picking up -- it's now the main threat in the US, UK, Germany, Denmark and Australia, in the first half of 2016.

These are the figures from security organization Bitdefender. Its report claims the Android SLocker ransomware family accounts for almost half of all mobile malware reported by infected devices in the first half of 2016 in Denmark.

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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.

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The highest rates of ransomware are now found in the education and government sectors according to the findings of a new report from BitSight.

The report looks at how ransomware is impacting almost 20,000 companies in six major industries: finance, retail, healthcare, energy/utilities, government and education. The findings show that the rate of new ransomware strains, such as Locky and Cryptowall, has spiked over the last couple of years, and numerous industries are beginning to fall victim to these ransomware attacks.

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Hackers are increasingly targeting healthcare institutions with malware because of their poor cyber-security posture, reliance on legacy IT systems, third-party services and the need to access information as soon as possible in order to deliver great patient care. These are the conclusions released in a new report entitled McAfee Labs Threats Report: September 2016.

It says that hospitals paid almost $100,000 (£75,500) to a specific bitcoin account. In the first half of 2016, one "actor" (it could be a single hacker, but more likely a group) apparently received $121 million in ransomware (189,813 bitcoin), targeting various industries. This actor, according to the report, has had profits of $94 million in the first six months of this year.

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