Barracuda releases its annual threat research report on ransomware

Barracuda released its third-annual threat research report on ransomware. The new research examines ransomware assault trends from August 2020 to July 2021.

A closer look at Ransomware trends   

Between August 2020 and July 2021, Barracuda researchers discovered and analyzed 121 ransomware events, finding a 64 percent rise in assaults year over year. Although cybercriminals continue to target municipalities, health care, and education, assaults on other companies are on the rise:

• Between August 2020 and July 2021, assaults against organizations, such as infrastructure, travel, financial services, and other enterprises, accounted for 57 percent of all ransomware attacks, up from 18 percent in our 2020 study.
• Infrastructure-related businesses are responsible for 10% of all attacks we investigated. In reality, ransomware assaults increasingly focus on software supply chains, allowing attackers to target more organizations in a single attack.
• The ransom demand is skyrocketing, with the average ransom demand per incident currently exceeding $10 million. A ransom demand of less than $10 million was made in 8% of the occurrences, and a demand of more than $30 million was made in 14% of the incidents.
• Ransomware assaults are growing more common around the world. In the last 12 months, little under half of the attacks (44%) have targeted US-based companies.

“As cybercriminals are working towards bigger paydays in the future, the security industry needs to continue to create solutions that are easily consumable for companies of all sizes,” said Fleming Shi, CTO at Barracuda. Also said,“Attackers often start with small organizations that are connected to the larger targets and then work their way up. All of us in the security industry have an obligation to turn sophisticated technology into products and services that can be easily consumed by customers.”