Businesses around the world are experiencing a rise in destructive malware attacks, which are designed to shut down information access and obliterate system functions on victim machines.
New data from IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) shows organizations hit with destructive malware can experience a total cost of $200 million and lose more than 12,000 devices in an attack. Large multinational companies incur an average cost of $239 million per incident, researchers report, citing analysis of publicly disclosed cyberattacks. The cost of remediation, equipment replacement, lost productivity, and other damage makes destructive attacks far pricier than typical data breaches, which average $3.92 million each, according to estimates from the Ponemon Institute.
"When you think about a destructive attack compared to a data breach, that attack process is very similar," says Christopher Scott, global remediation lead for IBM X-Force IRIS. "You have to get in the environment, expand access, get to what you want … and act on that objective." But unlike a traditional data breach, which typically targets intellectual property or other valuable information, a destructive malware attack aims to shut down a target's corporate environment.
Destructive malware, including ransomware that employs a "wiper" element, is on the rise: X-Force IRIS incident response teams helped organizations with 200% more destructive malware cases in the first half of 2019 compared with the second half of 2018. Ransomware packing destructive elements also spiked as new strains of LockerGoga and MegaCortex entered the landscape. Ransomware calls to X-Force IRIS' emergency response line spiked 116% in the first half of 2019.
"While not all ransomware attacks incorporate destructive malware, the simultaneous increase in overall ransomware attacks and ransomware with destructive elements underscores th ..
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