Big ransomware attacks overshadowing other alarming trends

Large ransomware attacks on major enterprises have dominated the news, but security experts say there are other alarming trends.

In the last few months, a number of large, recognizable brands were hit by either confirmed or suspected ransomware attacks. Some of the names include Xerox, Canon, Konica Minolta, Garmin, Carnival Cruises and Brown-Forman Corporation (the maker of Jack Daniel's), among others. But threat researchers say those headline-grabbing attacks have overshadowed other, more concerning trends.

SearchSecurity spoke with several cybersecurity experts to get a grasp of what's going on in ransomware right now, whether the threat is getting worse, what to expect going forward and how enterprises can protect themselves as more and more employees are working from home.

Ransomware is increasing, but it's not just thatThe practice of "shaming" ransomware victims, which was pioneered last year by the Maze ransomware gang, has dominated the headlines in recent months. But Jared Phipps, SentinelOne vice president of worldwide sales engineering, told SearchSecurity that this isn't necessarily a sign that the volume of attacks is increasing -- although that certainly is the case.

"It's not that more are happening -- it's just that for whatever reason, those ones made it to the news. The volume is pretty consistent -- it's really, really high. It's always really, really high," he said. "But ransomware as a whole has been rising for the last two years very consistently and it's at a very high volume."

But the attacks on major enterprises, which have been publicized by Maze and other gangs on their "news" sites, have overshadowed many other attacks that haven't been publicized. "For every ransomware attack you're reading in the news, there's several hundred you're not reading about. Some of them are very large. Some of them are business divisions of larger units. But if you're looking at the cyber insurance industry, they're looking at upwards of 100 claims per day that are ransomware-oriented."

Full article on https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252488454/Big-ransomware-attacks-overshadowing-other-alarming-trends

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