A recent survey found that mid-sized Canadian companies paid an average of just over $1 million in ransomware payments this year.
On Thursday, the results of a survey conducted by Palo Alto Networks were released. The survey involved IT professionals from 1,000 organizations with employee numbers ranging from 100 to 1,000.
"Palo Alto Networks has observed threat activity exploiting an unauthenticated remote command execution vulnerability against a limited number of firewall...
The Canadian Ransomware Barometer revealed that the number of ransomware attacks in Canada has decreased compared to the previous study conducted two years ago. However, the average ransom paid has increased by 150% to $1.13 million, compared to 2021.
Most businesses paid ransoms over $500,000, with more than half doing so. This is higher than the 29% that paid that amount in 2021.
The percentage of firms affected by ransomware remained stable this year at 35%, similar to the rate of 37% in 2021.
But fewer organizations are now willing to pay ransoms. This year, only 34% of respondents said their organization paid to regain access to their data, compared to 45% in the 2021 survey.
Just like in the previous study, over half of the respondents (58 percent) reported that it took them more than a month to fully recover from a ransomware attack. Furthermore, a significant portion, one-quarter (24 percent), stated that their recovery time spanned beyond four months.
The report provides tips to defend against ransomware attacks are:
— train staff that if they think a phishing email has arrived in their inbox, it must be reported;
— ensure all software and hardware have the latest patches;
— have a solid and tested data backup and recovery plan.