March 30, 2018 at 13:58Ransomware is gaining strength
"Ignorance does not liberate ..." or why Ransomware continues to flourish
Hello, Habr! Today we want to talk about the results of an interesting survey that Acronis conducted online in March 2018. It turned out that the attackers who rely on Ransomware act logically - the vast majority are not ready for such attacks and the amount of damage continues to grow. Under the cut - detailed information and statistics, as well as survey results. To get started, let's raise some scary statistics. According to CybeSecurity Ventures experts, in 2019, the damage from Ransomware will amount to more than $ 11 billion.
And this despite the fact that in 2018 experts expect only 5 billion damage. Moreover, the frequency of attacks in “pieces” is also growing. Not only that, in 2017 the number of ransomware species grew by 46%, according to the forecasts of CybeSecurity Ventures, by the end of 2019, every organization will be encrypted by ransomware every 14 seconds, when at the end of 2017 such attacks occurred on average once every 40 seconds .
To clarify the situation, we ordered a survey among corporate users in countries such as the USA, UK, Australia, France, Spain, Germany and Japan. And, most interestingly, 62.5% have never heard of ransomware programs at all. And this means that no protection against them is applied in principle.
In fact, the damage that analysts are talking about is precisely because most companies have no protection against ransomware. Moreover, the attackers themselves are constantly developing their methods of social engineering, as well as finding new loopholes for introducing malicious code. In most cases, standard antiviruses and systems of the Internet Security class cannot counteract a new type of ransomware - and in order to bypass signature protection it is often enough for a hacker to simply recompile the program with minimal code changes. similar attacks. As a confirmation - some more statistics. At the Ponemon Institutefound that 69% of corporate users believe that the installed antivirus will not be able to cope with new threats. Perhaps they have every reason to believe that way.
In fact, real protection against ransomware programs allows you to implement only a carefully thought-out and high-quality implemented backup system. If you have a not too old copy of the data, you can just give a damn about the encrypted files and report the ransomware to the competent authorities. It is only necessary to carry out a backup quite often, and solutions with incremental addition are ideal in this matter.
However, 2018 brought another problem to this area. Cybercriminals themselves began to realize that well-functioning backup mechanisms cope with the threat. Therefore, attack vectors began to apply specifically to backups and the Backup & Restore systems themselves. By the way, that’s why we had to add heuristic components to Acronis Backup and Acronis True Image in order to repel Ransomware attacks that perfectly understand the danger of backup systems.
In fact, the list of actions that must be taken to confront Ransomware is quite simple and consists of only four steps.
Unfortunately, the survey results showed a disappointing picture. Not only that, over 62% are not aware of the existence of the Ransomware threat at all, 33% of the participants do not save backup copies of their data at all - neither in the cloud, nor on their computer. At the same time, 39% work with 4 or more devices that store important data for them. It is this state of affairs that makes Ransomware a big threat to business and private users, although it would be quite simple to deal with it by installing a special protection system.
Hello, Habr! Today we want to talk about the results of an interesting survey that Acronis conducted online in March 2018. It turned out that the attackers who rely on Ransomware act logically - the vast majority are not ready for such attacks and the amount of damage continues to grow. Under the cut - detailed information and statistics, as well as survey results. To get started, let's raise some scary statistics. According to CybeSecurity Ventures experts, in 2019, the damage from Ransomware will amount to more than $ 11 billion.
And this despite the fact that in 2018 experts expect only 5 billion damage. Moreover, the frequency of attacks in “pieces” is also growing. Not only that, in 2017 the number of ransomware species grew by 46%, according to the forecasts of CybeSecurity Ventures, by the end of 2019, every organization will be encrypted by ransomware every 14 seconds, when at the end of 2017 such attacks occurred on average once every 40 seconds .
To clarify the situation, we ordered a survey among corporate users in countries such as the USA, UK, Australia, France, Spain, Germany and Japan. And, most interestingly, 62.5% have never heard of ransomware programs at all. And this means that no protection against them is applied in principle.
In fact, the damage that analysts are talking about is precisely because most companies have no protection against ransomware. Moreover, the attackers themselves are constantly developing their methods of social engineering, as well as finding new loopholes for introducing malicious code. In most cases, standard antiviruses and systems of the Internet Security class cannot counteract a new type of ransomware - and in order to bypass signature protection it is often enough for a hacker to simply recompile the program with minimal code changes. similar attacks. As a confirmation - some more statistics. At the Ponemon Institutefound that 69% of corporate users believe that the installed antivirus will not be able to cope with new threats. Perhaps they have every reason to believe that way.
What is the strength? In backup
In fact, real protection against ransomware programs allows you to implement only a carefully thought-out and high-quality implemented backup system. If you have a not too old copy of the data, you can just give a damn about the encrypted files and report the ransomware to the competent authorities. It is only necessary to carry out a backup quite often, and solutions with incremental addition are ideal in this matter.
However, 2018 brought another problem to this area. Cybercriminals themselves began to realize that well-functioning backup mechanisms cope with the threat. Therefore, attack vectors began to apply specifically to backups and the Backup & Restore systems themselves. By the way, that’s why we had to add heuristic components to Acronis Backup and Acronis True Image in order to repel Ransomware attacks that perfectly understand the danger of backup systems.
Simple hygiene
In fact, the list of actions that must be taken to confront Ransomware is quite simple and consists of only four steps.
- Back up ALL important data to disk in the cloud
- Install all patches on the OS and application software so that there are fewer vulnerabilities
- Remember about phishing - social engineering has reached great heights, and infected letters look very convincing lately
- Ensure that the security software (antivirus, firewall and backup tools) is updated and enabled.
Unfortunately, the survey results showed a disappointing picture. Not only that, over 62% are not aware of the existence of the Ransomware threat at all, 33% of the participants do not save backup copies of their data at all - neither in the cloud, nor on their computer. At the same time, 39% work with 4 or more devices that store important data for them. It is this state of affairs that makes Ransomware a big threat to business and private users, although it would be quite simple to deal with it by installing a special protection system.
Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.
Do you protect yourself from Ransomware?
- 25.5% No 12
- 23.4% doing backups 11
- 31.9% doing backups to the cloud 15
- 19.1% I have installed sensible software like your True Image 9