A new report from Mimecast has found that the US leads the way in the size of ransom payments following ransomware incidents.
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In the “State of Ransomware Readiness” study from Mimecast, researchers spoke with 742 cybersecurity professionals and found that 80% of them had been targeted with ransomware in the past two years.
Of that 80%, 39% paid ransom, with US victims paying an average of $6,312,190. Victims in Canada paid an average of $5,347,508, while those in the UK paid almost $850,000. Victims in South Africa, Australia and Germany paid an average of $250,000.
Over 40% of respondents did not pay the ransom and another 13% were able to negotiate the initial ransom amount.
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Of the 742 experts who spoke to Mimecast, more than half said the primary source of ransomware attacks came from phishing emails with ransomware attachments, and another 47% said it came from “web security.” Phishing emails that led to drive-by downloads were a highly cited source of ransomware infections.
Less than half of respondents said they have backups of files they could use in the event of a ransomware attack, and nearly 50% said they needed larger budgets to update their data security systems.
Despite the lack of backups, 83% of respondents said they could “get all their data back without paying the ransom.” Another 77% of executives said they believed they could get the company back to normal operations within two days of a ransomware incident. This was puzzling to Mimecast researchers, considering that nearly 40% of respondents admitted to paying the ransom.
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Some respondents called for more education and more information-sharing about threats.
The cost of a ransomware incident extends far beyond the ransom itself. 42% of survey respondents reported disruption to their operations and 36% said they experienced significant downtime. Nearly 30% said they lost revenue and 21% said they lost customers.
Another cost? Nearly 40% of cybersecurity professionals surveyed said they believed they would lose their jobs if a ransomware attack was successful.
Two-thirds of respondents said they would “feel very or extremely responsible if a successful attack occurred.” When asked why, nearly half said it would be because they “underestimated the risk of a ransomware attack.”.
Information source: zdnet.com
