The recently released Sophos claimed that 78 percent of Indian organizations were affected by ransomware in 2021, up from 68 percent in 2020. The survey also found that the average ransom paid by Indian organizations, whose data was encrypted in the most significant ransomware attack, was US$1,198,475, with 10 per cent of victims paying a ransom of US$1M or more.
About 78 percent of organizations that had their data encrypted paid a ransom to get their data back, even if they had other means of data recovery, such as backups. “The ransomware situation in India is worrying. The number of victims, ransom payments and the impact of these attacks continued to rise at a considerable cost during 2021,” said Sunil Sharma, Managing Director, Sales, India and SAARC, Sophos.
The report summarizes the impact of ransomware on 5,600 medium-sized organizations across 31 countries in Europe, America, Asia-Pacific and Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, including 300 in India.
“While the average cost of recovering from an incident declined from US$3.4M to US$2.8M in 2020, this is a significant number that should ring alarm bells among the management teams of Indian firms. In 2021, the percentage of organizations directly affected by ransomware increased from 68 percent to 78 percent. Ransomware is not something that can happen, it is something that will happen if you do not take the necessary precautions,” the survey read.
The survey conducted by Sophos also recommends best practices to help protect against ransomware and related cyber attacks. “With 89% of the insured organizations and 100 per cent of them getting compensation in the wake of the attack, we can expect the trends seen in insurance coverage and costs to continue to rise during 2021,” Sharma said.
“Policies will, with more exceptions, require stronger protection at a higher cost. Cybercriminals will continue to see India as a major target due to the high proportion of victims paying the ransom. The results show that a significant number of Indian victims are prepared to pay over a million US dollars, but a ransom of even a few thousand dollars is a good return for crooks.”
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