It is no news that, if you are a victim of this crime, the economic impact will be substantial. But do they really know how much a ransomware attack costs? If they really knew, they wouldn't be leaving anything to chance.
And when we talk about impact, in addition to the financial cost, which is due to a possible ransom and the disruption of critical business processes, there is also the cost of affecting the company's image, especially when it puts its customers' personal and financial data at risk. A situation that is occurring with the triple extortion of ransomware where, in addition to the theft of information and the demand for a ransom from the company that suffers the attack, there is also the blackmail of its customers.
Gradually, large companies are allocating more and more budget to their security systems, as they realise that it can be much more costly to recover from a ransomware attack than to prevent it.
RANSOMWARE IN LATAM AND THE WORLD
Latin America registers 5,000 ransomware attacks per day.
Between January and September 2020, it recorded 3 million ransomware attack attempts in the region.
35% of SMEs were affected, at an average cost of $183,000.
1 in 3 attempted ransomware attacks worldwide are against businesses, with Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, according to Kaspersky.
The most attacked in the region were Brazil (46.69%), Mexico (22.57%), Colombia (8.07%), Peru (5.56%), Ecuador (3.86%), Chile (2.29%), Venezuela (2.17%) and Argentina (1.93%).
The number of organisations affected by ransomware worldwide more than doubled in the first half of 2021 compared to 2020.
The average ransom payment is $310,000 and has increased by 171% in the last year.
Most recently, Colonial Pipeline, a major US fuel company, was the victim of such an attack. It is estimated that it cost companies worldwide, due to the pipeline outage, around $20 billion - a figure that is almost 75% higher than in 2019. Subsequently, Pipeline paid $5 million in ransom for its data and to get back up and running. A recent study by ESET reveals that 83% of businesses are unprepared for a ransomware attack and have no response protocols in place.
It is imperative to note that ransomware attacks exploit poor cybersecurity practices and vulnerabilities, such as the use of outdated software or pirated programmes, as well as weak or easily cracked passwords.
One problem we see in these companies is that they do not have the necessary human resources to carry out the necessary monitoring tasks, and that is why one of our methodological focuses is to automate this task as much as possible, and to make it as simple as possible so that more people can participate in the organisation of this monitoring.
It is important that companies are aware of the security of their systems, that they can have visibility on their weaknesses and work to address them.
It is also important to understand that this is something continuous, dynamic, systems and applications change day by day, and security must keep up with those changes. It is a race and those who are left at the end are the easiest targets.
We invite you to see more notes that may interest you in our blog.his blog: Cybersecurity&IT Security
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