From the WannaCry attacks on the NHS and other organisations five years ago and the Colonial Pipeline breach last year to the more recent Nvidia incident, the ransomware timeline continues to lengthen. In fact, there are few issues across the complex cybersecurity landscape that consistently create so many headlines and cause so much widespread disruption.
In 2021, for instance, nearly 40% of global organisations said that they had been the victim of some form of ransomware attack, according to a study by IDC. Arguably even more alarming was the report from CISA in February this year which identified an “increase in sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents against critical infrastructure organisations globally,” with 14 of the 16 US critical infrastructure sectors targeted.
Since WannaCry, the annual number of ransomware attacks has increased by over 60%, from 184 million to more than 300 million instances recorded annually. Where experts used to suggest ransomware attacks were not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’, today that perspective has notably shifted to ‘how often’.
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