Browsing: Sophos Active Adversary Report

• Payment for ransomware attacks is not only impacting large businesses even smaller ones have been hit with 7-figure demand.
• The rate of ransomware attacks falls slightly, but recovery costs hit $2.73 million.
• Despite the soaring ransoms, this year’s survey indicates a slight reduction in the rate of ransomware attacks

The amount organisations are paying to get back their data from cyber criminals has increased by 500 per cent in the past year, a new report by Cybersecurity solutions provider Sophos has revealed.

Sophos, in its annual “State of Ransomware 2024” survey, says this has seen organizations that paid the ransom report an average payment of $2 million, up from $400,000 in 2023, with ransoms being just one part of the cost.

Excluding ransoms, the survey found the average cost of recovery reached $2.73 million, an increase of almost $1 million since the $1.82 million that Sophos reported in 2023. …

• Level of remote desktop protocol abuse unprecedented since launch of report in 2020.
• External remote services were the number-one way attackers initially breached networks.
• Remote Desktop Protocol is a Microsoft proprietary protocol that enables remote connections to other computers.

Cybercriminals have resorted to the use of remote desktop protocol in executing their attacks on systems according to new findings by Sophos. The Sophos Active Adversary Report for 2024 shows that cybercriminals heavily exploited remote desktop protocol (RDP) in 90 per cent of attacks, marking the highest incidence of RDP abuse since Sophos started these reports in 2021 covering data from 2020.

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a Microsoft proprietary protocol that enables remote connections to other computers,

The report further says that external remote services such as RDP were the most common vector by which attackers initially breached networks; they were the method of initial access in 65 percent of …