Ransomware: Loss to Global Business and its Impact

On July 30 Accenture found some of its systems to be infected with a LockBit Ransomware and publicly confirmed the incident on August 11. It was also reported that the hackers demanded a ransom of $50 million in exchange for 6TB of data. Ransomware attacks like these continue to pose a challenge, and it is identified as one of the major threats by the majority of IT firms.

Ransomware is also software but it’s malicious, it locks the computer system or denies access to the data or threatens to publish the data and then demands a ransom for its release. Ransomware infection is caused by various factors, including spam/phishing emails, poor user practices, lack of cybersecurity training, poor security training, stolen user credentials, and many others.

Over the past few years, these attacks have become more common and costly, it was estimated that Ransomware attacks grew by 64% between August 2020 and July 2021. Due to the pandemic, many businesses have moved to online platforms, more people online means more attacks. This has a huge impact on the digital economy, in 2021 the global Ransomware loss was projected to reach USD 20 billion and it is predicted that by 2031 these attacks will cost around USD 265 billion annually.

These attacks are affecting critical sectors like the pipeline to small scale industries. In May 2021 the Colonial Pipeline was subjected to a Ransomware attack by the DarkSide Ransomware gang. This resulted in the disruption of fuel supplies across the Eastern United States. REvil one of the most active Ransomware gangs based in Russia was responsible for nearly 19% of the attacks. This gang was responsible for attacking Kaseya VSA servers last month.

Due to the vitality of cyberspace attacks like these have geopolitical implications. US president Biden discussed the Kaseya incident with Russian President Putin over the call due to the involvement of Russian actors.

Companies must focus on securing their databases and have multiple copies of their data in case of an attack. Also, they must focus on Zero days and reduce the vulnerability of their systems. Cooperation among the countries is required to get hold of the gangs responsible for such an attack, which seems not to happen anytime soon.