Ransomware attacks have become more prevalent.The average cost of recovering from attacks was $1.85 million in 2020.Īccording to the report, a few factors that may have played a role in the decrease of costs in 2021 include: The average cost of remediating ransomware attacks fell to $1.4 million in 2021. On average, organizations that suffered a ransomware attack took one month to recover from the damage and disruption. 86% of companies in the private sector reported that the attack had resulted in the loss of business and/or revenue. And a total of 90% of the victims stated that the attack had impacted their operations. In the study, 53% of the organizations said the impact of attacks had increased. Ransomware attacks have a significant impact on the operations of affected companies. Increased Operational Impacts of Ransomware Only 4% of organizations got all of their data restored after paying the ransom, down from 8% in 2020. Forty-six percent of organizations who paid the ransom only got 61% of their data back, down from 65% in 2020. The percentage of data restored after paying the ransom has dropped. As a result, the total ransom paid in 2021 rose by a factor of 4.8, from $170,000 in 2020, to $812,360. 26% of organizations that had other options for recovering their data, such as backups, still chose to pay the ransom. 46% of the survey respondents paid the ransom to decrypt the data impacted by ransomware. More organizations are choosing to pay the ransom to get their data back. Whereas the percentage of organizations paying less than $10,000 dropped from 34% in 2020 to 21% in 2021. The number of organizations that paid a ransom of $1 million or more rose to 11%, up from 4% in 2020. The Cost of Ransom Payments is Increasing However, extortion-only attacks saw a reduction from 7% to 4% - attacks where the attackers don’t encrypt data, but exfiltrate it and threaten to publicly publish it as the ransom method. In 2021, data was encrypted in 65% of the attacks, an increase of 11% compared to the 54% success rate in 2020. What’s worse is cybercriminals are becoming more successful at encrypting data in ransomware attacks. With the everything-as-a-service model, even those criminals without the skills and financing required to deploy a unique ransomware attack can use ready-made packages. An average of 57% of the companies surveyed reported an increase in the volume of attacks, and 59% said the complexity of attacks had increased. In 2021, 66% of organizations were hit with ransomware, an increase of 29% compared to 2020.Ĭybercriminals are finding more complex ways to launch ransomware attacks. The report, which surveyed 5,600 IT professionals in mid-sized organizations across 31 countries, shows that ransomware attacks are increasing and becoming more sophisticated. Sophos Labs recently released its annual global study, State of Ransomware 2022, which covers real-world ransomware experiences in 2021, their financial and operational impact on organizations, as well as the role of cyber insurance in cyber defense.