Cybercriminals have targeted organizations from many different industry segments, as well as businesses of virtually every size. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) and other kit-like tools have lowered the entry bar for cybercriminals, enabling even novice attackers to be successful against scattered security infrastructures.

And monetary technologies like bitcoin make it virtually impossible for law enforcement authorities to track ransom payments.

Many adversaries took advantage of the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to ramp up ransomware attacks against organizations in the healthcare sector in particular.

With the exponential growth in ransom paid to ransomware groups, the prospect that this will continue — and at a faster rate — in coming years is great. Recognizing the growing threat, banks are stocking up on bitcoin so their customers can quickly pay cybercriminals to unlock hacked data.

The financial impact of ransomware is much larger than just the ransom being paid to cybercriminals. Downtime can translate into thousands or even millions of dollars in lost revenue and productivity. Organizations across multiple industry sectors can attest to these implications.

Discover how this threat has exploded onto the cybersecurity landscape, why piecemeal approaches to security have not been sufficient to thwart the attacks, and what needs to be done.