Welcome To 2023—A Year In Which Everyone Is Still Worried About Ransomware
Gordon Lawson is CEO of Conceal, which enables organizations to protect their privacy and security using dynamic obfuscation.
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Ransomware—one of the most dangerous attack vectors in cybersecurity—remains a top priority for organizations going into the new year, but why? According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, ransomware attacks have increased by 13% from 2020 to 2021. This jump is greater than the past five years combined. Being front and center for years now, shouldn’t ransomware be under control?
Late last year, the United States held its second annual summit on ransomware. During the summit, global leaders from 36 countries and many private institutions came together to discuss the global implications of ransomware. The summit focused on developing a strategy to combat ransomware on a global scale—across all industries and geographies. If there is one thing that the summit brought to light, it is that the current approach, tools and priorities are not solving the global crisis. The current strategy is not working.
The Failing Strategy
Bracing for ransomware is not a new concept. Rather, the priority has been at the top of the agenda for security professionals for years. According to IBM, “The share of breaches caused by ransomware grew 41% in the last year and took 49 days longer than average to identify and contain.”
The threat of ransomware is in its sophistication, and the strategy to protect against it is not evolving with the changing threat landscape. Why is the focus of ransomware the same objective year after year? Unfortunately, the answer is simple—there is a gap in tooling.
In the current security landscape, there is not a single vendor that adequately solves the challenges surrounding ransomware. Rather, organizations are forced to pick and choose how to implement their solution from a variety of vendors that do bits and pieces to solve the full challenge. Unfortunately, this approach has proven ineffective, and bad things are still happening.
Today, solving the challenges of ransomware is further complicated by the continuous evolution of the threat vector. While traditionally, over 80% of ransomware attacks have…
