For professional consultation on how to prevent the next ransomware attack's damages, please contact our cyber defense experts at info@digitalbank.capital or visit us at www.DigitalBankVault.com
On May 7 the city of Baltimore had a rude awakening in the form of a ransomware attack that infected city servers across multiple offices. It was the biggest attack on a city since Atlanta in 2018. Like Atlanta, Baltimore refused to pay the ransom, at the time worth about $72,000 in bitcoin. And like Atlanta, which paid over $7 million to fix its problem, Baltimore has budgeted a whopping $18.2 million.
As cybersecurity experts, DigitalBank Vault generally recommend against paying a ransom; however, each case is unique in its totality, and I understand sometimes an organization’s leadership may decide their best option is to pay.
Publicly, ten high-profile victims in the US paid a ransom in 2019 totaling $2.3 million. That number may not seem very substantial for an entire year but consider those are only numbers from publicly reported payouts. While Kaspersky estimates millions of attacks go unreported and the FBI investigated 1,493 cases in 2018, evidence suggests that many of the ransoms are paid by victims.
Riviera Beach and Lake City, Florida were the first this year to report they had paid a six-figure ransom. Following attacks in May these small municipalities, made up of mostly retirees, had little recourse but to pay hackers. Riviera Beach paid $600,000 to decrypt communications systems and city servers.
Lake City paid $460,000 through their insurance carrier but unfortunately didn’t get the encryption keys they needed, a reminder that criminals can’t be trusted to always fulfill their end of the bargain.
In the public sector, 42% of organizations have suffered a ransomware incident in the last 12 months, with 73% of those experiencing two or more days of downtime as a result.
According to the Tech Transformers, ransomware attacks cost smaller companies an average of $713,000 per incident, a combination of the expense of downtime and lost business due to reputational harm.
It is estimated that ransomware has cost the United States more than $7.5 billion last year.
Q3 of 2019, we saw the average ransom payment increase by 13% to $41,198 compared to $36,295 in Q2 of 2019.
Ryuk ransomware is largely responsible for the massive increase in ransomware payments. The malware operators demand an average of $288,000 for the release of systems.
Healthcare organizations were a rich target in 2019. One report by Vanderbilt University even correlated an uptick in fatal heart attacks at hospitals in the months and years following a cyberattack due to ransomware or data breaches. As of December, 43 healthcare organizations across the country have publicly reported attacks. The healthcare industry also holds the dubious honor of experiencing the largest ransom demand of the year—$14million—when Virtual Care Provider, Inc. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin was struck in November. The company, which owns 110 nursing and acute care facilities across the country, will not pay the ransom and fears it may go out of business.
Indirect Cost: Reputation Loss
Ransomware attacks are unlike stealthy cyberattacks of the past. As such, they are both highly destructive and visible, leaving victims with no choice but to make it known to the public that they have been breached.
Indirect Cost: Liability
Ransomware attacks can lead to very unhappy clients, and these clients, in turn, could resort to legal means for some compensation. That’s what happened to DCH Health Systems after a ransomware attack on Alabama Hospitals in December 2019. Subsequently, patients filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging privacy violations, negligence, and medical care disruption.
Indirect Cost: Collateral Damage
As with any type of cyber infection, victims should expect the full gamut of damage, even if it’s not directly related to the attack. In one such incident, as reported by Brian Krebs, a company initially infected with Ryuk ransomware had its entire credentials stolen and then reused for all sorts of malicious activities, in part with the help of another notorious malware family, Emotet.
Indirect Cost: Data Loss
And unfortunately, after all the damage caused by the attack itself, paying the ransom does not guarantee the safe retrieval of the victim’s encrypted data. Recently, it was discovered that the data recovery mechanism used by Ryuk is faulty, causing an incomplete recovery of some types of files and leading to data loss even if the victim had paid the ransom demand.
For professional consultation on how to prevent the next ransomware attack's damages, please contact our cyber defense experts at info@digitalbank.capital or visit us at www.DigitalBankVault.com
Ransomware attacks can be deadly for businesses, which might never recover from the financial burden caused by the direct and indirect damage inflicted. In one such case, a US fundraising firm has been forced to close its doors after more than 60 years in business following a crippling ransomware attack in October. The company had paid the ransom, but nonetheless, it was unable to get back on its feet and had to close shop in late December, making it a very unhappy Christmas for all its employees.
CEOs from leading corporations worldwide are using the DigitalBank Vault Encryption System for securing ultra privacy over their communications (text, audio, and video messaging, emails)
and confidential cloud file storage.
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