Ransomware Rising Threats: Recent Payouts, What to Do and NOT to

We've already discussed various cyber attacks and different types of cybercrime. Our team would like to speak about ransomware threats and ransom payments as it can easily show how the situation develops and what's really going on.

Ransom Payouts in Figures

Ransomware attacks have made their way from cybercrime targeting any financial gain to one of today's most serious national security threats. With average ransom demands of a few hundreds of dollars several years ago to dozens of millions or higher nowadays, this cybercrime seems to never stop. 

$4+ million from Colonial Pipeline (US largest pipeline system) and Brenntag SE (German chemical distributor), 11 million from JBS  (largest meat processing company) - these are just a few examples of ransoms paid to criminals over the last few months - May to June 2021.

Why NOT Pay?

Before going into details, we want to remind you that cyber security precautions play the most critical role in ransomware attacks. Once you're on the hook, you can lose everything. It doesn't depend on your decision to pay or not. If you're considering ransom payments, we'd like to highlight a few points that we hope will help you understand why it is important not to pay (at least, when people's lives and health aren't at stake). 

First, the attackers have already committed a crime accessing your data; what makes anyone think that they'll play fairly at the moment a business owner pays ransom? Not to mention that it's far from the most crucial concern here.

Secondly, have you ever thought about how criminals spend ransom payments? Nothing legal or heroic can cross your mind because victims literally sponsor hackers' criminal activity. Even if your data is deciphered and returned after a ransom payment, you can't be sure they won't come back, that your data didn't get to anybody on the Internet, etc. Actually, as the digital forensics experts' experience shows, what you can be almost sure about is the opposite.

Getting it all even worse, the more victims do pay, the more cybercriminals want. And recent global cyber-attacks showed that hackers' up-to-date techniques and tools have limitless potential for malicious activity. With every attack and every success, cybercriminals increase ransoms dramatically. They investigate how much businesses can pay for valuable data by setting sky-high ransoms and then beating those record sums in no time. Ransomware is now a multi-million business.

However, everything isn't that straightforward if the business attacked loses millions or billions of dollars an hour. Or the work concerns people's and nation's safety and overall well-being.

What to Do?

The only working solution is reaching out to professionals at MBS Tech or other reputable cyber security companies. And the best strategy is to utilize experts' help as a preventive method rather than a mitigative ransomware management measure. With proper cyber security auditing and regular threat hunting, businesses can prevent and significantly reduce ransomware risks. 

There is one more important factor to take into consideration. The faster criminal activity is spotted, or the case investigated, the more chances you have to come through almost unscathed.

Even if you decide to satisfy hackers' ransom demands, cyber security experts are necessary to mitigate the risks, investigate the case, and ensure that you have all the measures and practices to prevent it from happening again.

Summing it up, our primary goal is to make it much harder for cybercriminals to hack and get away with it. Today's businesses need to invest in robust cyber security systems and ensure decent cyber security education for employees to address ransomware attacks. With top-tier protection, high cyber awareness, fast detection and risk mitigation, regular updating and threat hunting as rules, we'll have a big chance to fight back.