The cyber landscape continues to be increasingly favorable for hackers and other assorted criminals who initiate hacks and intrusions into peoples’ computers, mobile devices, and …
that targeted entities across North America and Europe. Among the data the researchers found was the fact that the average ransom paid by the victims in order to receive a decryption key that unlocks their networks was up 171% last year.from Unit 42, a global threat intelligence team at Palo Alto Networks, notes that: “The average ransom paid for organizations increased from US $115,123 in 2019 to $312,493 in 2020, a 171% year-over-year increase.
From 2015 to 2019, the highest ransomware demand was $15 million. But in 2020, while the world was still reeling from the public health and financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the highest ransomware demand grew to $30 million. We’ve covered a number of threats and attacks in recent months here at BGR that are often crimes of opportunity, with hackers seeing what they can get away with and going after the low-hanging fruit of victims who make dumb errors, but it’s not hard to see why attackers are increasingly gravitating to ransomware attacks.
“Organizations around the world are being held hostage by ransomware, and many are being forced to pay cybercriminals because they’re not equipped to combat the threat for varying reasons, from a lack of recoverable backups to the cost of downtime outweighing the cost of paying the ransom,” Davis said.
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