by: Stu Sjouwerman
With 54% of organizations unable to stop a ransomware attack before data is encrypted and operations are impacted, the increasing cost of ransomware remediation is troubling.
To put it bluntly, you can’t afford to be hit by ransomware.
Industry data time and time again makes the case that if you roll the dice on ransomware, the odds are the bad guys are going to encrypt your environment. You will likely pay the ransom, which your cyber insurance may or may not cover in its entirety, and it’s going to cost you enormous time, energy and money to eventually remediate the attack.
New data from Sophos’ The State of Ransomware 2021 report points out the bottom line piece of information you need to focus on – it’s going to cost you a ton of money if you get hit with ransomware.
A few details from the report provide some insight into what you should expect if attacked:
Only 39% of organizations were able to stop the attack before it encrypted data
Local government, Utilities, and Healthcare industries had the least ability to stop attacks resulting in the encryption of their data
The average ransom payment was US$170,404
Nearly one-third (32%) of organizations paid the ransom – this is a 23% increase over 2020
Only 65% of data was restored after paying the ransom
The average remediation cost is $1.85 Million and includes downtime, people time, device cost, network cost, lost opportunity, ransom paid, etc.
Again, you can’t afford it. So, it’s time to shore up your defenses, including Security Awareness Training to ensure your users aren’t the weakest link, clicking on phishing emails – a continually top initial attack vector for ransomware attacks.
