When it Comes to Ransomware, Americans Pay Up
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 04/29/2017 11:59 AM
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Why are Americans the target of so many ransomware criminals?
A new study from Symantec reports that 64% of Americans pay the ransom. Compare that to 34% of the victims worldwide. The bad news in all this is that only 47% of the worldwide victims get their files back.
Symantec's Global Intelligence Network found that ransomware attacks increase by 36% from 2015 to 2016. They estimate that the increase was from 340,000 instances to 463,000. The instance of new variants decrease which Symantec suggests: “It suggests that more attackers are opting to start with a clean slate by creating a new family of ransomware rather than tweaking existing families by creating new variants.”
Of the total of ransomware attacks, 69% were against consumers. And the cost of recovery has also increased from an average of $294 in 2015 to $1,077 in 2016.
A second report from NTTSecurity found that the targets break down as follows: business and professional services (28 percent), government (19 percent), health care (15 percent), and retail (15 percent).
Ransomware was not the only scourge on the internet. NTTSecurity reported that 73 percent of malware programs delivered to organizations in 2016 were the result of a phishing attack.
Source: SCMagazine
A new study from Symantec reports that 64% of Americans pay the ransom. Compare that to 34% of the victims worldwide. The bad news in all this is that only 47% of the worldwide victims get their files back.Symantec's Global Intelligence Network found that ransomware attacks increase by 36% from 2015 to 2016. They estimate that the increase was from 340,000 instances to 463,000. The instance of new variants decrease which Symantec suggests: “It suggests that more attackers are opting to start with a clean slate by creating a new family of ransomware rather than tweaking existing families by creating new variants.”
Of the total of ransomware attacks, 69% were against consumers. And the cost of recovery has also increased from an average of $294 in 2015 to $1,077 in 2016.
A second report from NTTSecurity found that the targets break down as follows: business and professional services (28 percent), government (19 percent), health care (15 percent), and retail (15 percent).
Ransomware was not the only scourge on the internet. NTTSecurity reported that 73 percent of malware programs delivered to organizations in 2016 were the result of a phishing attack.
Source: SCMagazine
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