Ransomware report of IBM has revealed that most of the businesses bow down to hackers spreading ransomware by paying them the said pay-off to access their systems and data. The study also reveals that more than 20 percent of them paid over $40K to retrieve data and half of them paid more than $10K ransom.
IBM’s X-Force Ransomware report said that financial records, intellectual property, business plans and consumer related data are widely targeted by hackers around the world. And that’s due to the fact that it gives them an opportunity to earn between $20,000 to $200,000 depending on the data type and its value.
IBM report on Ransomware also adds up a fact that the said malware made up 40% of spam emails sent in the year 2016.
Although many of the law enforcement agencies discourage the CIOs of the corporate world to not pay the ransom. Some CIOs in a bid to avoid public embarrassment pay the ransom, further fueling the intentions of the cyber criminals.
The IBM report on ransomware says that more than 35% of businesses who became the victims of ransomware in the past two years ended up in paying the ransom. And eventually decided to shut down their business for reasons.
Usually, big businesses which are based in healthcare and financial sector never recover from such cyber attacks as their clients and customers turn to other business options due to the lack of ‘Trust’ factor in the organization which is currently serving the purpose.
According to the IBM research analysts at X-Force, Backups and disaster recovery solutions prove as cost-effective solutions to curb ransomware.
The technique is simple-if the ransomware victim has another set of data which can be used for data continuity, then they need not bow to the demands of the hackers.
Similarly, if CIOs start investing in IT infrastructures such as encryption, data dispersal on cloud platforms and mobile security then such proactive measures can save them from all sorts of cyber attacks in future.
As per the ransomware report from IBM, Cyber criminals are expected to earn $1 billion as a financial return from ransomware targeting businesses and consumers.
The survey also concludes the fact that businesses usually pay and consumers balk. But if the cost is right, hackers get the demanded fund.
