76% of companies admit to paying a ransom to cybercriminals

In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk about cyber security, after the attacks that involved numerous institutions and even the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. The progress of the war in Ukraine has led to a substantial increase in malicious campaigns by cybercriminals, to the detriment of of institutional sites and companies. Taking stock of the situation is Veeam, a leader in backup, recovery and data management solutions for Modern Data Protection, which has published the Veeam 2022 Ransomware Trends Report. The results are alarming: 76% of companies admitted they paid a ransom to recover stolen data. Furthermore, the victims – the report tells us – are able to recover only 96% of the stolen data.

The Veeam investigation: companies increasingly hit by cybercriminals

The report is clear: Companies are losing the battle against ransomware. 80% of successful attacks targeted known vulnerabilities, underscoring the importance of patching and updating software. Almost all the attackers attempted to destroy the backup repositories, with the aim of disabling the data recovery capability without paying the ransom.

“Ransomware has democratized data theft and requires a collaborative effort from companies across all industries to maximize their ability to remediate and recover data without paying a ransom,” he said. Danny Allan, CTO at Veeam. “Paying cybercriminals to restore data is not a data protection strategy: there is no guarantee of data recovery, the risks of damage to reputation and loss of customer trust are high and, above all, it feeds and criminal activity is rewarded. “

The survey, in a nutshell, underlines that:

• Most of the attacked companies (76%) paid the ransom to end an attack and recover data.
• 52% paid and managed to recover the data.
• 24% were unable to retrieve any data despite paying the ransom.
• 19% of companies did not pay any ransom because they were able to recover their data on their own.
• 94% of attackers attempted to destroy backup repositories, and in 72% of cases, this strategy was at least partially successful.

The business habits seem to be the following:

• 81% of companies believe their companies’ cyber and business continuity / disaster recovery strategies are aligned. However, 52% of respondents believe interactions between these teams need to be improved.
• Almost all companies involved (95%) have at least an immutable or air-gapped level of data protection.
• 74% use cloud repositories that offer immutability.
• 67% use on-premise disk repositories with immutability or freezing
• 22% use air-gapped belts. Immutable or not, companies have highlighted that, in addition to disk repositories.
• 45% of production data is still stored on tape.
• 62% travel to the cloud during the data lifecycle.

At this link the complete Veeam Report.