As ransomware increasingly targets healthcare organizations, schools and government agencies, security experts offer advice to help IT leaders prepare and protect.
Nigerian princes are no longer the only menaces lurking in an employee’s inbox. For healthcare organizations, schools, government agencies and many businesses, ransomware attacks—an especially sinister type of malware delivered through spear phishing emails that locks up valuable data assets and demands a ransom to release them—are a rapidly-growing security threat.”We’re currently seeing a massive explosion in innovation in the types of ransomware and the ways it’s getting into organizations,” says Rick McElroy, security strategist for cyber security company Carbon Black Enterprise Response.
“It’s a big business, and the return on investment to attackers is there—it’s going to get worse.” While ransomware has existed for years, 2015 saw a spike in activity. The FBI received 2,453 complaints, with losses of over $1.6 million, up from 1,402 complaints the year before, according to annual reports from the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. And the numbers are only growing in 2016, the FBI reports.
“The Dark Web and Bitcoin allow almost anyone to sell stolen data without identification—cyber criminals understand they can make easy cash without the risk of being jailed,” says Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of web security company High-Tech Bridge. And hackers—most of which are located in developing countries—are growing more sophisticated, even developing downloadable ransomware toolkits for less-experienced hackers to deploy, according to the 2016 Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology Ransomware Report.
“The days of grammatically incorrect, mass spam phishing attacks are pretty much over,” says James Scott, senior fellow and co-founder of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, and co-author of the report. Hackers can now check a victim’s social media accounts, and create a fake email address pretending to be a friend or contact in order to get them to click on an infected link or attachment.
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