Cyber attacks are on the rise in 2017, clocking a staggering 238% jump in attacks against endpoints. In essence, businesses with over 10,000 employees routinely see about 1,000 attacks every single day and its ransomware attacks that continue to be the main attack vector.
According to endpoint security firm Carbon Black’s threat report, ransomware remains the attack variant to predominantly target technology companies, law firms and government organizations. The most common ransomware variants seen this year are namely: CryptXXX/ EXXroute, Locky, Cerber, Spora and Genasom.
“2017 saw several large-scale cyberattacks including WannaCry, NotPetya, and BadRabbit demonstrating that ransomware is not going anywhere. Ransomware is now estimated to be a $5 billion crime,” read an excerpt from the report.
Research reveals that the high-profile WannaCry ransomware attack was the first major exposure of a ransomware infection spreading across the world. The attack has stuck in the consciousness of consumers, with an estimated 72% of polled users stating they would consider leaving their financial institution if it were crippled by ransomware. A further 70% confirmed they would stop dealing with a retailer, online or offline.
Over half (52%) of all attacks seen this year were fileless non-malware attacks using native files to launch an exploit. 93% of security researchers revealed that non-malware attacks posed more of a business risk than commodity malware attacks.
The report’s authors wrote:
Ransomware will become more targeted by looking for certain file types and targeting specific companies such as legal, healthcare, and tax preparers rather than ‘spray and pray’ attacks we largely see now. There is already ransomware that targets databases, preying on businesses, and small tweaks to their code can target critical, proprietary files such as AutoCAD designs.
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