Ransomware continues to be a threat across the globe, with hackers targeting an organization’s most valuable files and systems and locking them down. Then they ask for money, or a “ransom,” to unlock these systems. To avoid the high cost of downtime associated with this cybercrime, many organizations simply pay the ransom. Unfortunately, the occurrence of these attacks continues to escalate, putting more and more organizations at risk.
The Cost of Ransomware
Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that ransomware damage will cost the world $11.5 billion in 2019, up from $325 million in 2015. $11.5 billion dollars! And, according to a survey conducted by Sophos, the average total cost of a ransomware attack is $133,000. This figure includes the ransom demanded, downtime, manpower, device cost, network cost, and lost opportunities. Additionally, five percent of those surveyed reported the total cost of the attack to be between $1.3 million to $6.6 million.
To illustrate how much an attack could cost you, let’s look at a recent example. Erie County Medical Center, located in Buffalo, NY, refused to pay a nearly $30,000 ransom demand in April 2017. However, the attack brought down the hospital’s computer systems, costing them nearly $10 million. Half of that cost was for computer hardware, software, and assistance needed in the response. The other half represents a combination of increased expenses (such as for staff overtime pay) and lower revenues from the loss of business during the system downtime. On top of that $10 million, they now have an ongoing expense of $250,000 to $400,000 a month for investments in upgraded technology and employee education to harden their computer system defenses and reduce the risk and impact of future attacks.
Make no mistake, ransomware will cost you big-time if you aren’t prepared for an attack.
Growth of Ransomware
Ransomware grew 250% over the first few months of 2017 and continues to be a real and prevalent threat to your organization. The graph below, from Kaspersky, shows just how rampant ransomware is.
As you can see, ransomware affects thousands and thousands of users. According to Kaspersky, the slight peak in May 2017 was fueled by the WannaCry pandemic and the SynAck targeted ransomware, which used the Doppelgänging technique. These attacks continue to evolve and it is very likely that, at some point, your organization will be a target.
How to Protect your Organization
To protect your organization from ransomware, endpoint protection isn’t enough. Sophos found that 75% of the organizations were running up-to-date endpoint protection when the ransomware attack occurred. Yet, the attack still took the organization’s systems down. So what should you do?
Protect your high-value targets. You need a way to recover quickly from an attack and get your systems back up and running. Micro Focus File Dynamics is the answer. File Dynamics protects high-value targets and enables quick recovery of data after a ransomware attack through our “Epoch Data Protection Policies.” These point-in-time policies enable you to specify which network folders are high-value targets for archiving and maintain nearline restricted access to those archives of high-value target folders. When critical files become lost or corrupted and secured archived files need to be recovered, File Dynamics administrators known as “data owners” can do so quickly and easily.
You can protect your organization from ransomware and Micro Focus can help!
Take these steps to start today:
Learn more about the benefits of ransomware protection with File Dynamics in this paper, “Top Ten Features of Epoch Data Protection Policies in File Dynamics.”
View our informative video, “Protect Your Organization from Ransomware with File Dynamics.”
Try out File Dynamics yourself with a free 30-day trial.
Get a no obligation quote for File Dynamics.
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