According to a report published by Cybersecurity Ventures, ransomware payments are predicted to cost victims over $265 billion by 2031. This isn’t difficult to imagine, given the recent streak of high-profile attacks, some of which caused a ripple effect that reflected on consumers finding themselves having to pay more for gas and finding heftier price tags one meat products.
The real scale of the problem is somewhat hard to quantify since most companies would rather not disclose whether a ransomware payment was made. And with the rise of double extortion ransomware, whereby attackers steal data before encrypting the target’s systems, the leverage that crime groups have on their victims continues to increase.
According to the same report by Cybersecurity Ventures, ransomware is expected to target businesses, consumers, and devices every 2 seconds by 2031. This will be made possible by the investment cybercriminal gangs are making into research and development and automation tools.
Commenting on the matter, Robert Golladay, an EMEA and APAC director at Illusive, stated:
“The increase and sophistication of these attacks will only accelerate the costs of dealing with ransomware. And the recent big attacks (Colonial, JBS and Ireland healthcare system) resulted in business shutdown for a period of time. This all adds up and doesn’t even factor in the cost of reputational damage or negative impact to a company’s valuation. To add insult to injury, the cost of cyber insurance is increasing exponentially (if they can get insurance at all). For sure, underwriting policies will begin to factor in the cybersecurity controls that an organization has put in place. An active defense strategy will be critical to not only stopping these attacks but keeping ongoing costs under control.”
