Ransomware is more of a threat to businesses than ever before

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Higher geopolitical tensions, an increase in remote working and learning, and the willingness of companies to pay up have all led to a significant increase in ransomware attacks.

A report from Check Point Research (CPR) claims one in 40 organizations now suffers a ransomware attack every week, with government/military, education/research, and healthcare industries the most targeted.

The government and the military sector has seen a 135% rise in ransomware attacks between Q2 2022 and last year, with one in every 24 organizations in the industry affected by ransomware each week.

Up 59% in a year

The education and research sector has grown into the most attacked industry worldwide, suffering an average of 2,300 attacks, per organization, every week. Compared to Q2 2021, that’s a 53% increase.

Finally, the retail and wholesale industry saw the biggest increase of ransomware attacks - 182% year-on-year.

All in all, the number of ransomware attacks has grown by 59% in a year. Most of them came in the second quarter of the year, rising by 32% compared to Q2 2021. During the quarter, the average weekly attacks per organization peaked at 1,200 attacks.

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Among the various regions of the world, Africa has seen the biggest increase in ransomware attacks (21% year on year for the weekly average of impacted firms), while in Europe, the number actually declined by 1% (one in 65 organizations are impacted by a ransomware attack on a weekly basis). North America has seen a minor increase (1%), while the ANZ region experienced an 18% increase year-on-year.

“Hackers are leveraging the increase in attack surface from remote work and learning, and the war between Ukraine and Russia also helps drive the proliferating trend, as geopolitical tensions rising inspires hackers to take sides,” commented Omer Dembinsky, Data Group Manager at Check Point Software.

“The willingness of organizations to meet ransomware demands in order to protect patients has proved the business of ransomware to be highly lucrative. Hence, we see that hackers are continuing to invest resources in going after healthcare organizations. We strongly recommend organizations everywhere to take note of our ransomware prevention tips, such as backing up data, keeping systems up to date and training employees on awareness.”

We would also add that a strong malware protection service, and a firewall, would be helpful.

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.