With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and the move to remote work, ransomware has become the number-one online threat facing businesses around the world. The best way to protect yourself and your business from the onslaught of ransomware gangs is to keep informed and stay vigilant. We’ve put together these ransomware statistics and facts to help you do just that.
What Is Ransomware?
Ransomware is a type of malware that locks your files with unbreakable encryption and forces you to pay a ransom for a decryption key. The hackers behind the attack usually request the ransom to be paid in bitcoin, though some ransomware gangs demand other cryptocurrencies.
Top 5 Ransomware Statistics and Facts
Here are the five most important ransomware stats you should know. Of course, there’s much more to learn about ransomware. Cloudwards.net reports[1] an organization gets hit by ransomware every 14 seconds in their top 20 ransomware statistics list, so keep reading to find out the risks of a ransomware attack and how to protect your company’s data.
1. How Many Businesses Are Affected by Ransomware?
A study by Sophos found that an astonishing 51 percent of surveyed businesses were hit by ransomware in 2020. Though mom-and-pop stores were less affected, the larger the company was, the more likely it was to suffer a ransomware attack.
2. How Much Did Ransomware Cost Businesses in 2020?
As 2021 rolls in, the stats reveal that ransomware gangs made off with 20 billion dollars in ransom payments the year prior. This brings the total damages from malware to an eye-popping 6 trillion dollars.
3. What Is the Average Ransomware Payment Demand?
As we mentioned, not all businesses are equally affected by ransomware, and ransom demands increase proportionally with the size of the business. The average ransomware demand has risen to $178,000 thanks to a number of high-profile attacks, though the average ransom for a small business is only around $5,900.
4. How Many Ransomware Attacks Are Successful?
Not all ransomware attacks result in data being encrypted. In fact, only 73 percent of ransomware attacks were actually successful, while 24 percent of attacks were intercepted before the malware could encrypt any data. The remaining three percent are due to “false” ransomware, which only falsely claims to encrypt your data, though it’s nothing more than an annoying pop-up.
5. What Percentage of Ransomware Victims Pay the Ransom?
Only a quarter of ransomware victims actually end up ponying up for their encrypted data. However, an entire 56 percent of businesses were able to restore their data using a backup. Your company should always have several backups in the cloud to keep its data safe from hackers and hardware failures.
Final Thoughts
A ransomware attack can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. Educating yourself and your employees about ransomware is the first and most important step to protecting your business from ransomware. We hope you enjoyed this list of ransomware statistics. Thank you for reading.
About the author
Mauricio Prinzlau is the CEO of Cloudwards.net, a software review website focusing on cloud computing and privacy related topics since 2012.