Sophos Reveals 76% of Ransomware Attacks Successfully Encrypt Data

Key observations

• The education sector experienced the highest level of ransomware attacks. About 79% of higher education institutions and 80% of lower education organizations reported falling victim to ransomware.
• According to 36% of respondents, the main cause of ransomware attacks was exploited vulnerabilities, followed by 29% claiming that it was compromised credentials.
• Around 30% of attacks were caused by emails - 18% started with a malicious email and 13% began with phishing.
• In the media, leisure, and entertainment sector, 55% of attacks were caused by exploited vulnerabilities, highlighting significant security gaps. 

Attack recovery stats

• Organizations that paid a ransom to decrypt their data faced higher recovery costs compared to those who used backups. 
• The average recovery cost for ransom payments was $750,000, whereas organizations relying on backups spent $375,000.
• Only 39% of organizations that paid the ransom were able to recover within a week, while 45% of those relying on backups achieved it in the same timeframe.

Who paid and who didn’t?

• Overall, 46% of organizations that had their data encrypted opted to pay the ransom. 
• Notably, larger organizations were more likely to pay, with more than half of businesses with revenue exceeding $500 million choosing to pay the ransom. 
• The highest payment rate was observed among organizations with revenue over $5 billion.

Othe key data

• The central and federal government sector had 41% of attacks originating from compromised credentials, potentially indicating a higher incidence of credential theft or difficulties in preventing the exploitation of stolen credentials. 
• Conversely, the IT, technology, and telecoms sector reported the lowest rates of both exploited vulnerabilities (22%) and compromised credentials (22%), suggesting robust cyber defenses. 
• However, this sector faced a high prevalence of email-based attacks, with 51% originating from users' inboxes.

Conclusion