Warning to Lincolnshire bosses: Average ransomware payment now £225,000

As I’m sure you have seen in both the local and national press, a current cyber-crime that can hit Lincolnshire businesses can costs a terrifying £225,000 to fix, according to new stats.

 

Ransomware is where all of a business’s data is encrypted and held to ransom by criminals. They demand a huge fee to decrypt it or to prevent them from releasing it into the public domain.

 

These attacks are one of the hardest cyber-crimes to undo and new statistics show that the criminals are getting smarter and greedier resulting in increased demands for money.

 

A threat intelligence team in the USA revealed the average payment following a ransomware attack last year went up 171% to £225,917. That’s compared to £83,228 in 2019.

 

What makes ransomware so difficult to undo is that criminals spend weeks, often months, preparing an attack.

 

They get into a business’s systems and slowly, quietly make changes, before launching their attack. These changes make it very difficult for an IT security company to undo the damage.

 

Every business should be more aware of ransomware and ensure that criminals can’t access their network.

 

All it takes is one person to click a link in one bad email and the damage can be done. Ransomware terrifies people, especially business owners and managers. However, there are some simple steps that you can take to vastly reduce this risk and many of them don’t cost a penny.

 

Want to find out more? Then give us a call on 01522 718396 and chat to one of our Cyber Security Team.