The financial sector was identified as one of the most targeted industries for ransomware cyber attacks in the last 12 months by the latest research from cyber company, Barracuda.
Attacks on the financial industry equated to six per cent of the top 106 highly-publicised ransomware attacks recorded since August 2021.
Ransomware attacks targeting finance organisations and institutions also tripled when compared to the same period last year.
The research found that, aside from the financial industry, the education, municipality, healthcare and infrastructure sectors also came under increasing threat.
Ransomware attacks on educational institutions more than doubled compared to the previous year, while attacks on the healthcare and financial verticals tripled, and infrastructure-related attacks quadrupled.
The research links the increasing number of service providers – companies that provide IT services or other business services – with the rising level of ransomware attacks.
Barracuda’s announcement correlates with the findings of StockApps, which found that ransomware attacks rose by 78 per cent between 2020 and 2021, while according to a report by Atlas VPN, global ransomware volume surged by 105 per cent during the same period.
However, according to public data, ransomware attacks continue to draw limited success when extracting monetary value from their victims, an element that could likely be attributed to the wider adoption of defensive infrastructures.
Barracuda’s own detections reveal that the volume of ransomware threats spiked at 1.2 million per month between January and June 2022.
The company points out that most ransomware attacks don’t make headlines as many victims choose not to disclose when they get hit and the attacks are often sophisticated and extremely hard to handle for small businesses.
“As ransomware and other cyber threats continue to evolve, the need for adequate security solutions has never been greater,” explains Fleming Shi, CTO at Barracuda. “Many cybercriminals target small businesses in an attempt to gain access to larger organisations.”
“As a result,” continues Shi, “it is essential for security providers to create products that are easy to use and implement, regardless of a company’s size.
“Additionally, sophisticated security technologies should be available as services, so that businesses of all sizes can protect themselves against these ever-changing threats.
“By making security solutions more accessible and user-friendly, the entire industry can help to better defend against ransomware and other cyberattacks.”
Image and article originally from thefintechtimes.com. Read the original article here.