Ransomware Attacks on the Rise
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Ransomware Attacks on the Rise

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Jan Hogewoning By Jan Hogewoning | Journalist and Industry Analyst - Thu, 10/15/2020 - 17:20

Ransomware attacks have seen a steep increase in 2020. ZDNET writes that according to newly released research, there has been a “huge increase in the number of ransomware attacks over the course of 2020, with a sevenfold rise in campaigns compared to 2019.” According to statistics from Veeam, ransomware costs are forecast to reach a record US$20 billion in 2021. The average costs of an attack amount to US$80,000 and the average time between attacks is only 11s.

What Is Ramsomware? “Ransomware is a maliciously created malware that finds and encrypts an organization’s files and storage,” according to Veeam Software. “The goal is to extort money from the organization, which is given the option to pay a usually high ransom to unencrypt the data or rely on backup to restore.” The potential impact on a company in terms of financial and reputational losses is considerable. Moreover, it leaves companies with its defenses in a weaker state, with 50 percent of new data not fully protected.

The threat of ransomware in Mexico is significant. According to a study conducted by the British firm Sophos, in 2019, 44 percent of organizations in Mexico were victims of ransomware attacks. Only 24 percent were able to stop the attack before data was encrypted by cybercriminals. One challenge is the ability to stop an attack before data is lost. The other is the ability to mitigate the fallout from the loss of data.

Veeam Software provides a multifaceted defense against ransomware attacks that includes several components. First, it ensures that data backups are resilient to ransomware by putting them out of reach. This is done by imposing controls that ensure deletions or changes cannot happen without strict multi-level approvals. Secondly, Veeam software allows companies to monitor their environment closely to be aware of any suspicious or abnormal activity. Third, Veeam scans backups, providing immediate notice of a malware threat. Fourth, it enables a complete anti-virus scan of backups when restoring , using the latest virus definitions to ensure that the latest threats are countered. Lastly, it can restore data, workloads and applications into a fully isolated virtual sandbox environment. While performing potential remediation activities, it can test for cyberthreats all the while not impacting any production systems.

In his interview with MBN, Abelardo Lara, Country Manager of Veeam Software, mentions how the company is essentially providing “an insurance against the damage that can be inflicted by a cyberattack.” He refers specifically to a ransomware attack that was recently suffered by Garmin, the cycling-ware and gadgets company. Because Garmin has its data backed up in a safe manner using Veeam Software technology, the ransom demanded by the attackers did not pose a real threat to the company.

Photo by:   WeissenbachPR

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