Ransomware attacks affect 1-in-40 organisations a week

Check Point Research (CPR) releases new data on cyber attack trends. Ransomware attacks now affect 1-in-40 organisations a week.

The top three most targeted industries for ransomware are government/military, education/research and healthcare. Higher geopolitical tensions, an increase in remote work and learning, and willingness of organisations to pay have led to a 59% YoY increase in ransomware attacks.

CPR also shares general cyber attack trends, including overall cyber attacks by industry and region. The second quarter of 2022 saw an all-time peak, where global cyber-attacks increased by 32%, compared to Q2 2021, where the average weekly attacks per organisation reached a peak of 1.2K attacks.

Additionally, the data found that retailers and the wholesale sector saw the largest spike in ransomware attacks, with an alarming increase of 182%. Also, government/military sector, reporting a staggering increase of 135%, reaching a ratio of 1 out of 24 organisations impacted by ransomware on a weekly basis.

Also, the education/research sector has become the most attacked industry worldwide, absorbing an average of more than 2.3K attacks per organisation every week, which marks a 53% increase compared to Q2 2021.

Omer Dembinsky, Data Group Manager at Check Point Software, comments: “Ransomware attacks are showing no signs of slowing down. Right now, we can say that 1 out of every 40 organizations we track is impacted by ransomware each week, which makes for a 59% YoY increase. Hackers are leveraging the increase in attack surface from remote work and learning, and the war between Ukraine and Russia also helps drive the proliferating trend, as geopolitical tensions rising inspires hackers to take sides.

“Lastly, the willingness of organisations to meet ransomware demands in order to protect patients has proved the business of ransomware to be highly lucrative. Hence, we see that hackers are continuing to invest resources in going after healthcare organisations. We strongly recommend organisations everywhere to take note of our ransomware prevention tips, such as backing up data, keeping systems up to date and training employees on awareness.”

Ransomware Prevention Tips:

1. Back Up Your Data. Make sure you back up your data regularly—constantly, if possible, and throughout the entire organisation.
2. Be Proactive. It’s worth putting together a response strategy; in other words, what are you going to do if your organization is the target of a ransomware attack?
3. Employ Content Scanning and Filtering. One common method for ransomware attackers is to trick employees into either providing their login credentials via a phishing link, or downloading a file that contains malware. You can protect against both of these potential threats by implementing more content scanning and filtering.
4. Keep Your Systems Up to Date. Make sure to keep your systems up to date with the latest software patches.
5. Train Your Employees. Ransomware attacks are often the result of poor employee training and/or bad employee habits. Make sure your employees are familiar with standard best practices in the cybersecurity world, like choosing strong passwords, never giving out their passwords to others, and avoiding links and content that appear suspicious or unfamiliar