Insurance Speak: Managing today's cybersecurity risks
Joshua Motta, CEO and founder of Coalition, discusses the rise of ransomware, who’s being targeted, and how hackers are executing their attacks.
The advent of the coronavirus expedited the need for many companies to operate remotely to protect the health of their employees and customers. Since the transition to remote work, there has been a substantial uptick in the number of cyberattacks on businesses of all sizes, as well as an increase in the use of ransomware.
Coalition is a cyber insurance and security company that has been monitoring these trends before and throughout the pandemic and recently released a report highlighting their findings. Joshua Motta, the CEO and founder of Coalition, shares some of their insights in the latest edition of PropertyCasualty360.com’s Insurance Speak podcast, Managing Today’s Cybersecurity Risks.
Since the shutdowns began, Coalition has seen a 47% increase in the severity of ransomware attacks, an increase in ransom demands, as well as the introduction of new malicious strains of malware.
Motta shares that the majority of these attacks are targeting small- to medium-sized businesses who don’t have the financial resources of larger companies, so the attacks are even more detrimental to their well-being. Among the industries seeing more attacks are financial services and retailers.
In addition, how hackers are using ransomware has changed. While previous attacks would hold access to the information for ransom, the new model also charges a ransom to keep the stolen information confidential, in essence, making companies pay twice – once to access their data and a second time to protect it from being shared on the open market.
The price for ransoms has also increased significantly, shares Motta. “It used to be several thousands of dollars for a ransom. Now it’s not unusual to see ransoms in the hundreds of thousands to the low millions. We have even seen them in excess of tens of millions depending on the size of the company.”
Does Coalition recommend paying the ransom if such an event occurs? You’ll have to listen to the podcast above for that answer.
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