Looking more closely at individual ransom demands shows that perpetrators are becoming more confident. Ransomware generates some huge stats, particularly regarding the cost of putting it right, with industry analysis suggesting it will cost victims around $265 billion annually by 2031. The longer term trends underline the point: Between 2012 to 2020, the annual volume of malware programs has risen from just under 100 million to over 1.2 billion. The AV-TEST Institute, for instance, registers over 450,000 new types of malware and potentially unwanted applications every day. It’s not just the volume of attacks that is the problem - cybercriminals are constantly shifting the focus of their efforts in an attempt to defeat existing reactive security technologies. This represents not only a new record high, but more than the total for the whole of 2020, and according to the Harvard Business Review, this year has seen a “dramatic increase” in ransomware activity.
Recent analysis has shown that there were over 300 million attacks in the first half of 2021 alone. The scale of the problem remains alarming. This denies them access to critical data and applications until a ransom is paid. Ransomware attacks work by infecting target systems with malware that when activated, locks the organization and users out of its systems.