A recent survey made to find the number of affected victims with ransomware in the United States has found that over 621 hospitals, 500 schools, and 169 businesses were hit by the said malware in 2019 alone.
Cybersecurity firm Emsisoft issued a report yesterday stating the above stats and added that the estimate of financial loss in Albany and New York alone might stand at $300,000- only to restore data following a ransomware attack.
Another security firm named Armor has said that over 15 US school districts accounting to over 100 schools were hit in the past two weeks alone and the list of school districts is as follows- Northshore School District, Smyth County Public Schools, Guthrie Public School, Houston County Board of Education, Mobile County School District, Wyoming Area School District, Jackson County School District, Wakulla County School District, Souderton Area School District, Rockford Public Schools, Mad River Local Schools, Papillion La Vista Comm Schools, Wallenpaupack Area School District and Ava R-I School District.
Armor states that most of the ransomware incidents were caused by Ryuk ransomware and some other active malware strains.
Unfortunately, both the firms which are into cybersecurity did not confirm the amount which went into the ransom payments to hackers as the heads of the impacted school districts weren’t ready for the disclosure.
Note- On the contrary, as per the report released by the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, out of 128 cybersecurity incidents on US K-12 Schools experienced in 2019, only 23 attributed to ransomware.
