Ransomware has hit pandemic proportions and there does not seem to be a clear end in sight. On October 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an advisory regarding ransom payments and the risk of sanctions associated with such payments.
Background
Ransomware has been around for decades. For many years, ransomware was more of a nuisance issue only involving a small number of computers than a real business disrupter. In recent years, we’ve seen increased sophistication and threat actors increasing the impact of an incident by finding ways to encrypt many devices at the same time and deleting or encrypting backup files, too. Additionally, many of the ransomware threat actors are exfiltrating data before spreading ransomware. Thus, even if the company can restore from backups they still face the extortion component.
We produce a yearly report that provides statistics and insights based on the data security incidents we worked on over the prior year.[1] This year’s Report analyzes the more than 1,000 incidents we worked on in 2019. 24% of our 2019 incidents were ransomware. In 2018, the average ransom amount was $28,920. In 2019, the average ransom amount increased to $302,539. Ransom demands have continued to grow in 2020, and as our next report will reflect, we are seeing demands in excess of $50 million. Exfiltration is an issue in a growing number of incidents (whereas only 6% of ransomware incidents in 2019 involved notification obligations being triggered).
One of the initial questions that our clients ask us is whether companies actually pay ransom and whether there is any proh ..
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