About 80% of businesses that pay the ransom of a ransomware attack suffer a second attack, with 46% believing it was caused by the same hackers. Additionally, 46% said at least some of their data was corrupted when they recovered it from the criminals, according to a Cybereason released Wednesday.
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It was conducted by Censuswide and included 1,263 security professionals across seven markets worldwide, including 100 in Singapore, as well as Germany, France, the US and the UK.
Globally, 51% recovered their encrypted systems without data loss, while 3% said they did not regain access to encrypted data. The report revealed that one particular organization reported paying a ransomware ransom worth millions of dollars and was hit by a second attack by the same attackers within a fortnight.
Globally, the survey found that 81% of respondents were highly concerned about the risks posed by such attacks, with 73% stating that they had policies or plans in place to manage specific ransomware attacks.
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Ransomware attacks are expected to cost $265 billion globally by 2031, with one attack affecting businesses and consumers every few seconds, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. This year, these attacks were estimated to cost $20 billion, a 57-fold increase since 2015.
Check Point Research also revealed that the average number of ransomware attacks worldwide increased by 20% in the last two months, 41% in the last six months, and 93% in the last year.
Latin America and Europe saw the highest increases in ransomware attacks since the beginning of 2021, at 62% and 59%, respectively.
A Veritas survey last November revealed that 78% of businesses in Singapore and 88% in Australia had paid a ransom in whole or in part after falling victim to such attacks. Furthermore, 45% in Singapore took between five and 10 days to fully recover from a ransomware attack, compared to 11% in India and 35% in China.
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Cybersecurity researchers typically advise organizations not to pay ransoms after ransomware attacks, arguing that businesses should adopt a data protection and recovery strategy.
Cybereason, however, noted that backups don't work as effectively when cybercriminals launch "double extortion" malware attacks, in which hackers go beyond data encryption, obtaining sensitive data and intellectual property and threatening to leak it online if the ransom is not paid.
