Are Federal Agencies Ready For Ransomware?

Are Federal Agencies Ready For Ransomware?

This blog is the fourth of six upcoming articles about the growing cybersecurity threat known as ransomware. GovLoop partnered on this series with Veritas Technologies, LLC, a data management software company and ThunderCat Technology, an IT solutions provider. Working together, we aim to explain what ransomware is and how federal agencies can prepare for, respond to and survive potential attacks.

About one third of government IT officials say they’re unsure how their agency would respond to an increasingly pervasive cybersecurity threat, according to a new poll by Scoop News Group and Veritas Technologies, LLC.


In the survey, released in December 2019, 31% of federal and state decision-makers said they didn’t know their agency’s policy for responding to ransomware.


The poll sought to uncover how agencies at every level of government are handling ransomware. Ransomware is a form of malware, or malicious software, that purposely harms technologies such as computers and IT networks.


Unlike other malware, ransomware attackers threaten to publish the victim’s data or block access to it unless a ransom is paid.


According to research Veritas conducted in 2019, the U.S. was the nation most affected by ransomware attacks that year. Veritas suggests that the U.S. suffered more ransomware incidents than any other nation in 2019 because 64% of American victims reportedly paid the ransoms demanded of them that year.


“Anything your personnel has access to or that’s just open, ransomware can get into it,” Rick Bryant, National Healthcare Architect and Practice Director at Veritas, said of ransomware. “In a world where we ..

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