How to Stop Ransomware Attacks

The future of cybersecurity brings with it many changes, some of which we can predict today. Companies tend to be unprepared for the fastest-spreading threats, including ransomware. Ransomware prevalence increased 365% between Q2 2018 and Q2 2019 and then grew another 148% during the COVID-19 crisis, according to research by Osterman Research. Attackers’ strategies and techniques change quickly. According to IBM Security X-Force Incident Response, which saw an explosive increase in ransomware attacks especially in Q2 2020, today’s attackers are very agile. Ransom demands are steadily increasing as attackers narrow their focus to victims, such as manufacturers who can incur millions of dollars in losses for a day of downtime and therefore have little tolerance for it. Threat agents are also combining new extortion tactics based on data theft into ransomware attacks, stealing confidential company information and threatening to make it public if their victims do not pay for the decryption key. These tactics require a review of incident response and crisis recovery plans, but many security teams are not keeping pace. Watch our webinar where we will explain how a PAM (Privileged Access Management) can protect your company from ransomware attacks.