Multiple cyberthreat reports highlight the shift to targeted ransomware attacks focusing on public and private businesses.
At the 22nd Annual Black Hat Conference this week in Las Vegas, Malwarebyte released its Black Hat 2019 Edition of its quarterly threat report that focused singularly on one specific threat, ransomware. And, the news zero-ed in on the 363% increase in ransomware attacks on corporations. You read that right, a three-fold increase year-over-year. And, the results showed that consumer ransomware attacks are on the decline by 12% year-over-year and 25% quarter-over-quarter for the first time.
The results from this latest cyberthreat report align with other recent reports from Vectra and Symantec. All document the growth of targeted attacks on businesses in the last two years – stating that ransomware attacks are focusing less on “the high-volume, low-return, spray-and-pray consumer attacks to lower-volume, high-value, targeted attacks against businesses.”1 According to the Malwarebyte report large, ill-prepared public and private organizations are at the greatest risk.
The Malwarebyte report states: “Municipalities, educational institutions and healthcare organizations have become prime targets, likely because of legacy infrastructure, outdated hardware and software applications, and lack of security funding in these sectors. And, there’s also a lack of human resources.” Adam Kujawa, Director of Malwarebytes Labs, adds: “Our critical infrastructure needs to adapt and arm themselves against these threats as they continue to be targets of cybercriminals, causing great distress to all the people who depend on public services and trust these entities to protect their personal information.”
Does this scenario sound too familiar from your corporate standpoint? Possibly so.
At Automox, we believe that securing your corporate infrastructure from potential ransomware attacks starts with the basics of good cyber hygiene. While ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated, if you keep your corporate endpoints patched and updated you can solve for most of the underlying vulnerabilities that are leveraged. Our philosophy is simple: patch your systems for known vulnerabilities, effectively manage software and system updates, and maintain full visibility of all your hardware and software assets to ensure compliance. It’s all about being a smaller, more difficult target for attackers to exploit.
Corporate IT and SecOps teams can't rely solely on detection and response when defending against emerging ransomware variants. They need to combine strong prevention strategies that start with eliminating their underlying vulnerabilities and exposures by proactively hardening their corporate endpoints.
Learn more about our cloud-native modern approach to patch management at www.automox.com. Or, feel free to connect with an Automox expert directly.
About Automox
Facing growing threats and a rapidly expanding attack surface, understaffed and alert-fatigued organizations need more efficient ways to eliminate their exposure to vulnerabilities. Automox is a modern cyber hygiene platform that closes the aperture of attack by more than 80% with just half the effort of traditional solutions.
Cloud-native and globally available, Automox enforces OS & third-party patch management, security configurations, and custom scripting across Windows, Mac, and Linux from a single intuitive console. IT and SecOps can quickly gain control and share visibility of on-prem, remote and virtual endpoints without the need to deploy costly infrastructure.
Experience modern, cloud-native patch management today with a 15-day free trial of Automox and start recapturing more than half the time you're currently spending on managing your attack surface. Automox dramatically reduces corporate risk while raising operational efficiency to deliver best-in-class security outcomes, faster and with fewer resources.
