Jane Edwards
Alex Whitworth, cybersecurity solutions vertical executive at Carahsoft Technology, said government agencies and organizations must assess their cybersecurity posture and initiate cyber improvements to ensure that they can withstand ransomware attacks.
“With the increasing trends, officials point to the new harsh reality that ransomware is not a question of if a company will be attacked through malware, but when,” Whitworth wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.
“Based on the current landscape, organizations must act or risk being swept away by the growing tide of ransomware,” he added.
According to Whitworth, ransomware infects a system in four ways and these are through phishing emails and malicious links; insecure network devices, ports and services; backdoors left by other malware; and missing software patches, poor password hygiene and other network vulnerabilities.
He talked about ransomware as a service and how its rise has helped facilitate cyberattacks.
Whitworth cited some ransomware-related trends. He noted that 66 percent of organizations experienced a ransomware attack in 2021, up 37 percent from the 2020 figure, and that 65 percent of those ransomware attacks resulted in the encryption of victims’ files in 2021, reflecting a 54 percent rise from the previous year.
