A survey conducted by Barracuda on over 630 organizations, says that corporate organizations from the EMEA region are paying hackers the demanded ransom in order to free up their databases from encrypting malware. This approach is being highly discouraged by law enforcers and security experts as it doesn’t guaranty data access to the victims and there are instances where the hackers could demand more to the previous sum, in exchange for the decryption key.
The research also discovered that businesses operating in the APAC region are least mature in terms of deploying cybersecurity technology and best practices. Their laxity towards cyber defense is due to the fact that their company heads do not show seriousness when it comes to cyber attacks due to their reactive nature towards the incidents.
In such cases, security experts suggest that the mindset of the company heads can only be changed by educating them on the latest happenings in the cyber landscape. This will not only encourage them in training their employees but will also help in bringing down the attack scale levels.
Barracuda survey confirms that 35% of businesses are still falling prey to ransomware attacks predominantly due to email phishing. Thus, until the organizations tend to better educate their users, they will continue to pay dividends for the criminals
Finally, Ransomware spread can not only cause downtime, user frustration, and productivity loss but can also bring down a business to a permanent standstill. Thus, by properly understanding the threat facet, businesses around the world can fair a better chance of recognizing and blocking an attack before it’s too late.
Note- A ransomware is a kind of malware variant which locks down a database from access with encryption until a ransom amount is paid to the hackers. Usually, the ransom demand is in Cryptocurrency.
