It has been reported that Gardai and government ministers have warned businesses to prepare for potential ransomware attacks, saying that the number of attacks targetting small and medium businesses has increased. The government and Gardai launched a joint awareness campaign on Tuesday for October’s European Cyber Security Month. Along with ransomware, the campaign will be warning vulnerable people such as the elderly to be aware of phishing scams, where a message or a link asks for someone’s personal details.
According to the publicly-confirmed ransomware attacks logged on the Comparitech worldwide ransomware tracker, there has been a huge increase in the number of records breached in these types of cyber attacks this year. This is despite a lower number of attacks being recorded (this doesn’t necessarily indicate that ransomware attacks have decreased but that public confirmation of such attacks have reduced).Throughout the whole of 2021, we recorded 1,283 ransomware attacks affecting 43.7 million records. For 2022 so far, we have logged 492 ransomware attacks affecting 75.9 million records. This vast increase in records impacted demonstrates how hackers are focusing heavily on data theft as a way to secure ransoms. Some even suggest that hackers are moving away from encryption of systems in some cases as data theft is proving a better ransom negotiation tactic.
This new wide-casting of cyberattacks demonstrates how bad actors will happily change their approach if it means increasing possible pay-offs. Corporations need to keep their networks and associated apps up to date, helping to plug security holes that could be used by the bad guys to breach their network. Companies should back up their data on a daily basis, using a backup server that operates separately from the main network.
Employee and executive training should include warnings to be wary of attachments and links in emails and messages, and should also be taught to detect social engineering hack attempts.