New data shows just how much major industries are paying out to remediate successful ransomware attacks, despite guidance to never pay the ransom.
Looking past the age-old question of whether to pay the ransom or not, cybersecurity consulting firm Kivu’s just-released Paid Ransomware Report sums their experiences helping clients in 2019.
The most interesting data is to see how cybercriminals ask for and are able to get varying sums of money for the decryption key. According to the report:
- The average payout for school districts (Education) was $132K
- The average for higher education was $154K
- Manufacturing averaged a payment of $172K
- Healthcare averaged $87K
- Cities/Municipalities averaged $77K
Kivu suggests Managed Detection and Response services as a way to help minimize the scope of an attack with early detection as a priority. In addition, most ransomware today still follows one of two initial attack vectors: remote desktop and phishing. The opportunity to leverage remote desktop is quickly closing as organizations eliminate access to internal desktops from the Internet. Which leaves phishing. Security Awareness Training is one of the most effective ways to minimize the phishing threat surface: the user. By educating the user on phishing tactics and trends – as well as the why and how to avoid becoming a victim, organizations can reduce the risk of successful ransomware attack that results in one of the aforementioned costly ransoms being paid.
