100% Rise in Number of UK Businesses Paying Hacking Ransoms
New research into the attitudes and beliefs of cybersecurity professionals has identified a sharp rise in the number of businesses paying up when stung by a ransomware attack.
The 2019 Global Security Attitude Survey Report by California cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike shows that the number of global organizations paying ransoms from supply-chain attacks has more than doubled from 14 to 39 percent in the past year.
In the UK, over the same time period, the number of businesses coughing up their money after being held to ransom by threat actors has increased by 100 percent from 14 percent to 28 percent.
On a more positive note, it takes UK organizations on average 39 hours to detect an adversary, versus a sluggish global average of 120 hours.
Over three-quarters (77 percent) of survey respondents admitted that their organization had experienced a supply-chain attack at least once at some point in time, up from 66 percent in 2018. However, compared to last year, more businesses said that they were prepared for such an incident.
Over half (52 percent) of those hit by a software supply-chain attack in 2019 had a comprehensive strategy in place at the time, compared to only just over a third (34 percent) 12 months ago.
“Reacting with speed to next-generation, persistent and pervasive threats requires the power of the cloud and crowdsourced data on the real threats facing organizations, whether they are malicious files or from file-less behaviors,” said John Titmus, senior director, sales & solution engineering, EMEA region, CrowdStrike.
“The solution to these threats lies within the power of the cloud and AI to leverage vast data sets to spot indicators of attack before those attacks break out and become breaches. Then organizations react at the speed required to beat organized cybercriminals and nation-state adversaries.”
The 2019 Global Security Attitude Survey Report is based on responses from 1,900 senior IT decisionmakers and professionals from across the US, Canada, UK, Mexico, Middle East, Australia, Germany, Japan, France, India, and Singapore, working in a wide range of industries. Responses were recorded in the fall of 2019.
This post 100% Rise in Number of UK Businesses Paying Hacking Ransoms originally appeared on InfoSecurity Magazine.
