Retail Ransomware Woes: Sophos Survey Signals Growing Threat

Sophos, a prominent cybersecurity provider, released insights from its latest survey on ransomware in the retail sector. The report, titled “The State of Ransomware in Retail 2023,” reveals a concerning trend—only 26% of retail organizations managed to disrupt a ransomware attack before their data fell victim to encryption. This marks a decline from 34% in 2021 and 28% in 2022, indicating an increasing struggle to thwart ongoing ransomware assaults.

Chester Wisniewski, Sophos’s Director of Global Field CTO

“Retailers are losing ground in the battle against ransomware,” emphasizing the need for enhanced security measures that can detect and respond to intrusions earlier in the attack chain.

The report also highlights that for retail organizations resorting to ransom payments, the median recovery costs (excluding the ransom) were four times higher than those utilizing backups ($3,000,000 vs. $750,000). Despite 43% of retail victims opting to pay the ransom, Wisniewski advises against shortcuts, urging organizations to prioritize rebuilding systems instead of funding cybercriminals.

Key findings from the report include a rise in encryption rates, with 71% of targeted retail organizations experiencing successful data encryption by attackers. Although the overall percentage of retail organizations attacked by ransomware decreased from 77% to 69%, the time taken for recovery saw a concerning shift, with a drop from 15% to 9% recovering in less than a day and an increase from 17% to 21% taking over a month.

Sophos recommends several best practices to bolster defense against ransomware, such as deploying security tools to combat common attack vectors, implementing Zero Trust Network Access, utilizing adaptive technologies for automatic response to attacks, and ensuring 24/7 threat detection. Additionally, the report advises optimizing attack preparation through regular backups, practicing data recovery, and maintaining an up-to-date incident response plan. Timely patching and regular review of security tool configurations are also emphasized.

To delve deeper into the State of Ransomware in Retail 2023, Sophos encourages downloading the full report from Sophos.com. The survey involved 3,000 IT/cybersecurity leaders from organizations with 100 to 5,000 employees, including 355 respondents from the retail sector across 14 countries in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.