Barracuda Networks Inc., a provider of cloud-first security solutions, published its fifth annual Threat Spotlight on ransomware. The report looks at ransomware attack patterns that occurred between August 2022 and July 2023.
The report was written after analyzing 175 publicly reported ransomware attacks globally among municipalities, healthcare and education. Among the findings was the number of reported attacks has all doubled since last year and more than quadrupled since 2021.
While successful ransomware attacks targeting infrastructure-related industries are lower in volume compared to the top three sectors, these industries experienced more than twice the number of attacks compared to last year.
The analysis revealed similar patterns of escalation in other industries, particularly ransomware attacks on software businesses.
In the past 12 months, Barracuda’s SOC-as-a-service team observed these types of incidents: business email compromise (BEC), ransomware, malware infection, insider threat, identity theft, and data leakage.
Barracuda researchers also took a closer look the impact of generative AI tactics on ransomware attacks, looking at ways cybercriminals can use these capabilities to strike faster and with better accuracy.
“The number of successful ransomware attacks continues to climb and shows no signs of slowing down,” said Fleming Shi, CTO at Barracuda. “Recent advances in generative AI will only help ransomware gangs increase the rate of attack with more effective cyber weapons. That’s why it’s essential for organizations to have tools in place to detect and prevent attacks, but also to be resilient and prepared to recover from an attack.”
Read the full Threat Spotlight blog post: https://blog.barracuda.com/2023/08/02/threat-spotlight-ransomware-attacks-double-ai-tactics/
For more information, visit barracuda.com.
