ESET
study reveals that 84 percent of companies would be crushed if infected by
ransomware and 31 percent would have no choice but to pay the hackers
Over a third of UK companies have either personally been held to ransom
by hackers or know someone that has had their networks infected by ransomware,
a new study from ESET has revealed.
The study, which was
carried out at Infosecurity Europe in June 2015 and examined the attitudes 200
security professionals, also revealed that 84 percent of respondents believe
that their company would be seriously damaged if it was ever infected by
ransomware. However, 31 percent of respondents admitted that if they were infected
by ransomware they would have no choice but to pay the fine because the
alternative would mean losing all the data on their computer.
Commenting on the
findings from the study, Mark James, security specialist at ESET, said: “Ransomware
is one of the most frightening types of malware due to its destructive power. The
results from our study are very concerning as it seems that IT security
professionals still do not understand how to properly deal with ransomware. With
all ransomware infections the biggest problem we face is the decision on how we
deal with the attack. Our options are limited to either paying the ransom,
which is definitely not recommended, or we can restore from backup, however
depending on how often you back up your files, this can mean losing a lot of
data.”
Ransomware can be among the most frightening forms of
computer invasion. The attack involves someone’s computer screen being replaced
by a message that appears to be from the police, demanding money, or a message
saying your files are lost unless you pay a ransom to unlock them. Over the
last year cyber criminals have developed a number of new ransomware variants
which have allowed hackers to encrypt their victims’ data, which has forced
more people to pay the ransom.
“If you do manage to get yourself infected and all your files are
encrypted then you only have one option, you have to restore from backup. With
the massive amount of backup solutions available these days it really is very
inexpensive to do and frequent backups can literally save your business. Any
company that pays the ransom is funding criminals, and as long as hackers find
ransomware to be profitable, the more effort they will put into building even
more sophisticated variants, which will get harder and harder to remove,”
continued James.