It's clearly a great time for cybercriminals to be in the ransomware business. New data from security vendor Coveware shows that in the fourth quarter of 2019, attackers on average collected more than double in ransom money from enterprise victims than they did in the previous quarter. By monetizing a mere 2% or so of their attacks, most ransomware operators were able to generate a sizable profit on their investments last quarter, Coveware estimates. Coveware analyzed ransomware victim data collected from its incident response engagements as well as from IR firms using its platform, in the last three months of 2019. The data showed that average ransomware payments soared 104% from $41,198 in the third quarter to $84,116 in the fourth quarter. On average, a ransomware attack cost victim organizations some 16.2 days in downtime, compared to just 12.1 days in the third quarter of 2019. Half of the victims who forked over a ransom paid $41,179 or less, while half paid more. At the high-end, some victims paid up to $780,000 to get the decryption keys for unlocking their data, while at the other end of the spectrum other victims paid as little as $1,500. The wide range in ransom demands and payments reflected the sheer diversity of the threat actors that were active last quarter, Coveware said in a report released Monday. "The doubling of the amount was surprising," says Bill Siegel, CEO and co-founder of Coveware. "I think we expected it to rise, but had not expected the impact of large enterprise attacks to pull the average up as much as it did." Coveware's report is one of several in recent weeks that have highlighted a disturbing increase in ransomware attacks on enterprise organizations. A lot of it appears to ..
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