By Allen Jenkins, Chief Information Security Officer and VP of Cybersecurity Consulting at InterVision on April 11, 2023
According to Forrester, nearly two-thirds of organizations (63 percent) were breached by ransomware in 2021, up 4 percent from the previous year. Recovery was a long, hard road for many of those enterprises — while for others, the downstream effects of ransomware were ultimately insurmountable. The alarming rise in ransomware must guide IT leaders’ cybersecurity decisions in 2023.
Why is ransomware on the rise? For one, bad actors are becoming far more advanced and prolific. Ransomware gangs continued to make headlines in 2022 for their high-profile attacks and advancements in post-breach encryption. On the other end of the spectrum, the barrier to entry for ransomware is lower than ever before. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) — which allows bad actors to deploy ransomware for a fee — has ushered in a new generation of hackers who can target enterprises of all sizes despite their relative inexperience with cybersecurity protocols.
