In a study of 225 global financial services organizations, researchers with Comparitech found that ransomware attacks cost them in excess of $32.3 billion in downtime alone, over the past five years. Comparitech head of data research, Rebecca Moody explained that researchers used a 2017 study to calculate downtime costs of $8,662 per minute, noting however an ITIC 2017 study put estimated that figure in the millions per minute for the banking sector which would raise the estimate to over $581 billion.
- 225 confirmed ransomware attacks on financial organizations
- Ransom demands varied from $180,000 to $40 million w/ an average demand of $6.9 million
- Over 32.3 million individual records were breached
- Downtime varied from one day to 52 days – average downtime 10 to 14 days
- Insurance companies saw the highest number of attacks (65)
“If no specific figures were given for downtime, i.e. ‘several days,’ ‘one month’ or ‘back to 80% after 6 weeks’ were quoted, we created estimates from these figures based on the lowest figure they could be,” explained Moody.
Morten Gammelgard, EMEA, co-founder, BullWall had this comment:
“It’s never just the amount of the ransom, but the overall cost of downtime and reputational loss that make ransomware so costly. Forewarned is forearmed and the expense of maintaining a solid cyber defense pales in comparison to the after-action cost of the entire event, whether the ransom is paid or not.
“Data loss is one of the worst consequences of Ransomware and it is rare that companies are able to restore 100% of the data encrypted. This can lead to serious problems for businesses, such as the loss of customer data or confidential company information.”
The bottom line is that Ransomware is expensive. And the best way to not have to bear that expense is to pay whatever you have to to make sure that you have defences that mitigate the possibility that you will be the victim of ransomware.
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This entry was posted on July 15, 2023 at 8:18 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Ransomware Costs Of $32.3 Billion Spread Over Just 225 Organizations
In a study of 225 global financial services organizations, researchers with Comparitech found that ransomware attacks cost them in excess of $32.3 billion in downtime alone, over the past five years. Comparitech head of data research, Rebecca Moody explained that researchers used a 2017 study to calculate downtime costs of $8,662 per minute, noting however an ITIC 2017 study put estimated that figure in the millions per minute for the banking sector which would raise the estimate to over $581 billion.
“If no specific figures were given for downtime, i.e. ‘several days,’ ‘one month’ or ‘back to 80% after 6 weeks’ were quoted, we created estimates from these figures based on the lowest figure they could be,” explained Moody.
Morten Gammelgard, EMEA, co-founder, BullWall had this comment:
“It’s never just the amount of the ransom, but the overall cost of downtime and reputational loss that make ransomware so costly. Forewarned is forearmed and the expense of maintaining a solid cyber defense pales in comparison to the after-action cost of the entire event, whether the ransom is paid or not.
“Data loss is one of the worst consequences of Ransomware and it is rare that companies are able to restore 100% of the data encrypted. This can lead to serious problems for businesses, such as the loss of customer data or confidential company information.”
The bottom line is that Ransomware is expensive. And the best way to not have to bear that expense is to pay whatever you have to to make sure that you have defences that mitigate the possibility that you will be the victim of ransomware.
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This entry was posted on July 15, 2023 at 8:18 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.