Barracuda has released its third annual threat research report on ransomware.
Barracuda researchers identified and analysed 121 ransomware incidents that occurred between August 2020 and July 2021 and saw a 64% increase in attacks, year over year.
Cybercriminals are still heavily targeting municipalities, healthcare and education, but attacks on other businesses are surging:
- Attacks on corporations, such as infrastructure, travel, financial services and other businesses made up 57% of all ransomware attacks between August 2020 and July 2021, up from just 18% in the 2020 study.
- Infrastructure-related businesses accounted for 10% of all the attacks the company studied. The ransom amount is increasing dramatically and the average ransom ask per incident is more than US$10 million. A total of 8% of the incidents had a ransom ask of less than US$10 million and 14% of the incidents had a ransom ask of greater than US$30 million.
- Ransomware attacks are becoming pervasive across the globe. Just under half (44%) of the attacks in the past 12 months hit US organisations.
Fleming Shi, CTO, Barracuda, said: “Attackers often start with small organisations that are connected to the larger targets and then work their way up. All of us in the security industry have an obligation to turn sophisticated technology into products and services that can be easily consumed by customers.”
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