The IT Nerd

BlackFog today released the State of Ransomware report for March 2023. And Dr. Darren Williams, CEO and Founder, BlackFog had this commentary on the report:

     “March witnessed a total of 28 ransomware attacks. While lower than January and February, this still represents a 4-year high, with a 12% increase over previous years. Most notably we continue to see the flow of effects from unreported attacks. March saw 1,403% of attacks going unreported, up from 478% and 543% in January and February respectively. Nearly a 3-fold increase from previous months.

March also saw Education increase its lead as the most targeted sector, increasing by more than 53%, with 26 attacks for the year, followed by government and healthcare with increases of 33% and 13% respectively.

LockBit continues to dominate as the key ransomware variant with 24.3% of reported attacks and 41.4% of unreported attacks. It should be noted that the sheer volume of unreported attacks this month was dominated by LockBit, and we expect this to be reflected in the disclosed attacks over the coming months. Similarly, both CLOP and Royal were highly leveraged in unreported attacks with 11.4% each.

Lastly, we note that it is now becoming less common for attacks to remain unclaimed as ransomware gangs seek notoriety, with only 14% unclaimed this month. We have also seen continued use of data exfiltration in more than 88% of attacks, with March witnessing a significant increase in the use of illegal networks, up 14% to 94% since February.”

Today’s full report can be found at: https://privacy.blackfog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/BlackFogRansomwareReport-Mar-2023.pdf

BlackFog today announces it has been named a winner of three Cybersecurity Excellence Awards and that The Globee® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs and business ranking lists, has named BlackFog a winner in the 19^th Annual 2023 Globee Cybersecurity Awards.  

The awards BlackFog has received for the 6^th annual Cybersecurity Excellence Awards:

• Silver Winner for Most Innovative Cybersecurity Company in North America
• Gold Winner for Best Virtual CISO in North America
• Silver Winner for Ransomware Protection 

BlackFog received Gold place for Best Cybersecurity Newsletter of the Year in the 19^th Annual 2023 Globee® Cybersecurity Awards for its monthly State of Ransomware Report. 

The Globee Cybersecurity Awards recognize cybersecurity companies and professionals for their innovative approaches and effective solutions in ensuring security in the digital age. The awards cover various categories such as risk management, threat detection, cloud security, data privacy, and more. The program aims to raise awareness about cybersecurity issues and honor those who have made significant contributions in protecting organizations and individuals from cyber threats.

BlackFog has released a monthly State of Ransomware report for the past three years, analyzing ransomware attacks and the statistics around them, including:

• Reported ransomware attacks by month
• Key trends
• Prevalent threat groups 
• Size of organizations being attacked
• Attacks by industry sector

BlackFog newly added the tracking and inclusion of non-publicly disclosed ransomware attacks, which it has included in its 2023 State of Ransomware reports. 

BlackFog’s Virtual CISO (vCISO) platform includes a dedicated team of experts that provide monthly assessments, constant monitoring with the BlackFog solution, detailed custom reporting for compliance and auditing, and a customer-branded Enterprise console, managed by their team.

About the Globee Awards 
Globee Awards are conferred in nine programs and competitions: the American Best in Business Awards, Business Excellence Awards, Cybersecurity World Awards®, Disruptor Company Awards, Golden Bridge Awards®, Information Technology World Awards®, Leadership Awards, Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success Awards, and the Women In Business Awards®. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com

About BlackFog

Founded in 2015, BlackFog is a global cybersecurity company that has pioneered on-device anti data exfiltration (ADX) technology to protect companies from global security threats such as ransomware, spyware, malware, phishing, unauthorized data collection and profiling. Its software monitors enterprise compliance with global privacy regulations and prevents cyberattacks across all endpoints. BlackFog uses behavioral analysis to preemptively prevent hackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in enterprise security systems and data structures. BlackFog received recognition as a Gold award winner in the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards for Best Data Security and Best Ransomware Protection North America, as well as the Bronze award in Most Innovative Cybersecurity Company and Best Cybersecurity Start-up in 2022. BlackFog was named a 2020 HOT Vendor in Privacy and Security by Aragon Research. 

BlackFog’s preventative approach to security recognizes the limitations of existing perimeter defense techniques and neutralizes attacks before they happen at multiple points in their lifecycle. Trusted by corporations all over the world, BlackFog is redefining modern cyber security practices. For more information visit https://www.blackfog.com

BlackFog has released the February 2023 State of Ransomware Report. BlackFog issues a monthly recap of the latest stats in ransomware attacks including prevalent threat actors, tactics, volume of attacks in varying countries and vertical sectors, rate of disclosed and undisclosed attacks compared to other months, and more. Please feel free to use this data in any articles, reports or research on ransomware attacks. 

Darren Williams, CEO and Founder, BlackFog, has provided perspectives on the state of ransomware for February 2023:

     “For the second month of 2023, we have seen new records broken, with February seeing a new high of 40 victims, a 43% increase from 2022. This month we continue to collect unreported data, and this month we see 543% of attacks remain unreported, a 65% increase over January.

Sector-wise we saw education continue to dominate with 17 victims, and healthcare and government closely behind with 15 each. Government attacks saw the biggest increase in February, with a 150% increase since January, while Healthcare and Education saw 88% and 70% increases respectively.

Data exfiltration continues as the main weapon of choice for ransomware and is used in 88% of all attacks. This month we also saw an increased number of attacks originating from China, which now represents 38% of all attacks, up from 36% in January. Russia remains stable at 9%.

Finally, in terms of variants, as we predicted in January we saw a dramatic increase in attacks from LockBit, as victims from previous months begin to disclose attacks. We expect this pattern to continue as unreported attacks continue to be dominated by LockBit, which is at 48%, while disclosed is at 24.3%. BlackCat also increased to 24.3%, although the growth in unreported remains significantly lower.”

I’d spend some time reading this report as it provides a lot of insight as to what threats you really need to worry about.

BlackFog has today released the State of Ransomware Report for January 2023. BlackFog issues these reports monthly to provide insight into the varying countries, threat groups, variants and more, by tracking both publicly disclosed and unreported ransomware attacks. 

Darren Williams, CEO and Cofounder, BlackFog had this comment:

“After a record-breaking 2022, we start January with yet another record, this time the highest January on record with 32 attacks, a 22% increase over 2022. We also start 2023 with new statistics and now include unreported attacks so we can see the scope of the problem. This month we see that 478% of attacks have gone unreported, a growing trend we have seen over the past year.

We also start 2023 with education leading the way with 10 attacks, 30% of the total for the month. This continues the trend we saw in 2022 followed closely by healthcare and government with 8 and 6 attacks respectively.

January also saw some big changes in data exfiltration, which is dominated by China, representing 36% compared to Russia at 9%. As of 2022, we see that exfiltration is now the dominant technique for ransomware and was involved in 88% of all attacks in January.

Lastly, we see that LockBit continues to be the dominant variant and expect this to increase further over the coming months and was involved in 18.8% of reported attacks, but crucially 32.6% of unreported attacks. We expect to see this reflected in next month’s statistics as we see some pull-through from unreported to reported.”

The full report can be found here.

BlackFog today released the November State of Ransomware Report. Key findings for the month of November from Dr. Darren Williams, CEO and Founder, BlackFog:

• “Unusually, November saw the second highest number of ransomware attacks this year, a 180% increase year over year with a total of 42 attacks. There seems to be no end in sight, with recent insurance statistics demonstrating a general lack of preparedness. In fact, providers are now mandating more serious levels of protection before underwriting any new cybersecurity policy.
• The biggest changes this month saw the persistent use of data exfiltration at 89% and a further increase in the use of PowerShell, now utilized in 86% of all attacks.
• The greatest increases by industry involved Healthcare and Manufacturing with increases of 26% and 25% respectively. Smaller increases were observed in Education and Government, with 14% and 13% respectively, but continue to be the most targeted industries. Typically, these organizations struggle due to financial and skill shortages (please refer to BlackFog’s latest research article @ https://www.blackfog.com/cybersecurity-leaders-consider-quitting/). 
• LockBit easily took the lead this month in terms of variants with a 33% increase in successful attacks followed by BlackByte and BlackCat with increases of 25% and 14% respectively.”

Today’s full report can be found here: https://privacy.blackfog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/BlackFogRansomwareReport-Nov-2022.pdf

BlackFog’s monthly State of Ransomware Report for October is out and the key findings for the month of October from Dr. Darren Williams, CEO and Founder, BlackFog are:

• October saw the highest number of confirmed ransomware attacks in the 3 years that BlackFog has been collecting data with a total of 44 publicized attacks. This highlights the limitations of existing traditional cybersecurity solutions and the general lack of preparedness by most organizations.
• This month saw the largest increase in attacks on the Technology sector with an increase of over 29%. As in previous months we have also seen large increases in attacks on sectors with the lowest levels of protection in place, namely Healthcare, Education and Government with increases of 20%, 16% and 12% respectively.
• The most dramatic changes in ransomware variants this month were BlackCat with an increase of 47% and LockBit with an increase of 39%. This reflects the effectiveness of these variants and specifically the data destruction capabilities of BlackCat that we became aware of in September.
• While we continue to see PowerShell increase utilization to 85% we note this month that data exfiltration is now involved in 89% of all successful attacks.

Today’s full report can be found here: https://privacy.blackfog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BlackFogRansomwareReport-Oct-2022.pdf

BlackFog has today released the State of Ransomware Report for September 2022. 

BlackFog issues a monthly report accounting for cyberattacks within the last month, showing targeted industries and the current active threat groups. 

The key findings for the month of September below from Dr. Darren Williams, CEO and Founder, BlackFog:

• September represents the second highest month of the year with 33 reported ransomware attacks. Ransomware shows no signs of abating with this month representing the third highest number of attacks over the past 3 years.
• This month we have seen major increases in several ransomware variants. Hive attacks increased by over 50%, Vice Society by 43% and BlackCat 25%. These increases come at the same time that several variants have started experimenting with data destruction, most notably BlackCat.
• As in previous months we continue to see a focus on the least protected sectors of Healthcare, Education and Government with increases of 25%, 13% and 19% respectively. This month however we saw the largest increase in the Retail sector of 27%, as cyber criminals explore new targets with low investments in cybersecurity.
• PowerShell continues to be highly leveraged as an attack vector and is now used in 83% of all attacks.

The full report can be found here: https://privacy.blackfog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/BlackFogRansomwareReport-Sep-2022.pdf

BlackFog has released the August State of Ransomware Report. You can read the report here. And I have commentary from Dr. Darren Williams, CEO and Founder of BlackFog:

     “August represents the second biggest month of ransomware attacks since we began recording ransomware attacks back in 2020. 

We continue to see increased attack rates in sectors with low levels of protection and aging infrastructure such Education and Government, with increases of 15% and 20% respectively. This month we also saw dramatic increases in Healthcare and Services sectors of 33% and 35% respectively as attackers look to broaden their targets.

Lockbit continued its dominance along with Conti at 14% and 16.5% respectively. The top 4 variants now contribute to 50% of all new attacks.

Lastly, this month we also saw that attacks leveraging the PowerShell for the first time hit 80%, a new record.”

I would give this report a read as it illustrates what those in on cybersecurity teams have to defend against.