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The threat of ransomware is becoming widespread among corporations, with almost half of U.S. businesses suffering an attack from the nasty form of malware recently, according to a new survey.
Security firm Malwarebytes sponsored the study, which found in June that 41 percent of U.S. businesses had at least encountered between one to five ransomware attacks in the previous 12 months.
Another 6 percent saw six or more attacks.
The study surveyed corporations in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Germany to gauge how ransomware affected their operations.
The malware, which can infect a computer and take the data hostage, can be bad for business. Thirty-four percent of the victim corporations in the countries surveyed reported losing revenue because the ransomware had prevented access to important files.
U.S. businesses victimized by the malware generally didn’t suffer a heavy toll and only 6 percent of them reported losing revenue. In most cases, the malicious code only affected personal files.
[...] More amateur cybercriminals are probably indiscriminately spreading ransomware in the U.S. like spam, the survey added. Low-level ransom demands of up to $500 are prevalent in the U.S. However, high ransom demands of more than $10,000 are more common in Germany.
Malwarebytes sponsored Osterman Research to conduct the study by surveying 540 CIOs, CISOs and IT directors across the four countries.
What steps has your company taken to protect against ransomware? Is it enough? What about your personal system(s)?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday August 06 2016, @08:11PM
Because the combination of offline backups combined with hidden encrypted "data vaults" that keeps an image of the OS and a copy of the latest backup has so far worked perfectly against every nasty thrown at 'em. I haven't run into Ransomware yet in part because I have trained my clients well to "in doubt call me" and because by default the browser is always run in a low rights sandbox with adblocking and the AV vetting websites for malware before page load, but the few nasties that were able to actually get far enough to pop up on screen? A simple reboot was enough to wipe the sandbox and make them go bye bye.
Of course the ironic thing is that I ended up having to strike out on my own because the PC shops where I worked would actually got pissed at me for "doing too good a job" and not leaving PC vulnerable, they cared more about repeat business than doing a decent job. I guess that is why they are out of business now and I get mine from referrals from happy customers but I'm proud to say I have PCs in the field pushing the decade mark, still happily serving their owners bug free. I suppose I should be planning their migration but I'm honestly not worried about it, after all XP to 7 was a lot bigger jump than Vista to 8.1 and I'm sure the previous strategy will work just fine, simply make a VM of the previous OS to run on the new OS so they don't have to hurry or worry about compatibility as they slowly move their programs over. In about a year all their programs will be switched over and I can toss the VM, easy peasy.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.