Organizations and businesses around the world face many cyber threats that put them at the risk of data breaches and theft. These include phishing campaigns, DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), malware, brute force attacks, and many more. However, one of the most dangerous cyber threats that lead many organizations to lose their valuable data is ransomware.
Ransomware involves the loss of sensitive data, including information regarding a business’s operations, secret recipes, clientele, customer information, years of research, and, more importantly, the critical history of a business internally.
As far as the damage an organization might suffer, it includes the deterioration of business rep, loss of customer trust, loss of customer base, and a lack of potential investors in the future. Here’s how the threat of ransomware still creates issues for organizations.
What is Ransomware?
Targets of ransomware culprits widely include schools, educational institutes, research facilities, businesses, large corporates (MNCs), government authorities, NGOs, etc. Ransomware is one of the most cunning forms of attacking a platform or digital entity.
The initial step of a ransomware attack involves a stealthy email or some other form of compromising malware that analyzes and reveals any potential vulnerabilities of the system. Following that, cyber attackers infect and encrypt the sensitive or targeted data with a real and heavy attack on the digital entity. Thus, the targeted data becomes inaccessible to everyone except for the cybercriminals.
The attackers demand a large ransom to restore the data and give access back to the owners. Hence, the victims have no choice but to accept their demands in order to protect their critical information. More so, attackers might still reveal the information even after receiving the ransom.
How is Ransomware Still a Threat for Businesses and Organizations?
Normally, businesses and organizations tend to pay the attackers silently to preserve their image and resume their operations. The news of cyber attacks can compromise the trust of customers in the business and even lead to embarrassment for an organization among the competitors.
Losing private data is another calamity that can hurt the image and rep of a business while also incurring expensive lawsuits from stakeholders affected by the leak of sensitive data. Did you know that nearly 190 million ransomware attacks took place in the year 2019 ?
With powerful computers in today’s modern digital world, encryption of sensitive data is not a cumbersome task for experienced and trained. In fact, cyber attackers trick the system and get away easily most of the time! Ransomware requires certain knowledge regarding hacking and suiting the process, while many attackers sell pre-developed and deployable ransomware kits online. Hence, anyone can cyber attack any digital entity unless it has a robust data security system in place.
Businesses have to make Key Decisions
Ransomware is not as common as other cybercrimes, yet it can have a major devastating effect on an organization and even those in affiliation with it. Businesses have to make key decisions as they receive the cyber attackers’ notification.
Their thought process usually involves either calling a bluff and risking the whole business or paying the attackers for recovering the data. Nevertheless, once the attackers encrypt the data, you have to pay in order to gain personal access to it. Otherwise, they may leak your organization’s sensitive and critical data publicly.
Conclusion
Cyber attacks are increasing day by day and are not limited to small-scale businesses but also large corporate firms. Yes, the risk of cyberattacks is significantly higher due to the accessibility and information available on the internet. But you can protect your data by improving your security system and taking experts’ help in case of a data breach.
