Ransomware breaches at a record high: Verizon

There is an alarming rise in ransomware breaches in India, which increased by 13% in the last year, representing a jump greater than the past 5 years combined, said Verizon on Tuesday.

As criminals looked to leverage increasingly sophisticated forms of malware, it was ransomware that continued to prove particularly successful in exploiting and monetising illegal access to private information, said the company’s The Verizon Business 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report.

As a large section of India Inc. across industries adopted a hybrid work model, new security challenges and complexities continued to emerge and therefore it was imperative for organisations to know their blind spots and secure mobile devices as well as their overall cloud computing environment, the report said.

Also, it said, addressing the four key paths of credentials, phishing, exploiting vulnerabilities, and botnets would help protect against the most common routes ransomware uses to invade the organisational network.

Anshuman Sharma, Head Investigative Response, APJ at Verizon, “The continued explosion of connected devices and widespread digitisation in multiple sectors has increased the likelihood of cyberattacks, especially ransomware. The inaction or the delay in the implementation of technical and infrastructure has made organisations more vulnerable.’‘

This edition of Verizon report analysed 23,896 security incidents, of which 5,212 were confirmed breaches. Data were collected from 87 contributors, both domestic and international, ranging from law enforcement agencies to forensic and law firms to CERTs and ISACs, and government agencies from several countries including India.