Cyber criminals are getting more extortionate with their demands from SMEs, according to Datto’s annual European State of the Channel Ransomware report.
According to its numbers the average ransom requested of SMEs by hackers is increasing – now sitting at around £2,000.
Downtime related to such attacks is increasing by 300 percent in Europe, year-on-year, higher than the global average of 200 percent.
However, the associated system downtime from ransomware is hitting small organisations even harder – costing European businesses around £107,956 on average, an eye-watering 53 times more than the average ransom requested in 2019, and higher than the global average of 23 times. 54 percent of MSPs report that their clients suffered a loss of business productivity after a ransomware attack, followed by 34 percent suffering business-threatening downtime, alongside citing lost data and/or devices and decreasing client profitability (both 33 percent), and infections spreading to other devices on the network (32 percent).
The report said that professional services industry most affected by ransomware. More than 47 percent of MSPs reported that the professional services industry is the most affected by ransomware attacks, followed by construction and manufacturing (35 percent), retail (25 percent), non-profit (22 percent). The telecom and energy / utilities industries appear to be the least affected with only three per cent and a per cent of MSPs reporting attacks in these industries.
Security doesn’t appear to be top of mind during the design of IoT devices and cyber attackers will find ways to exploit this vulnerability. More than 69 percent of MSPs predict ransomware will target IoT devices, followed by social media accounts (59 percent) and utility infrastructures (52 percent). As ransomware continues to become more sophisticated, more than 51 percent believe ransomware will bankrupt entire companies.
Ransomware remains the most prominent malware threat to businesses across Europe (83 percent ). More than 61 percent of MSPs reported ransomware attacks against their clients in the first half of 2019, compared to the global average of 56 percent and 19 percent of those were multiple attacks in a single day, again higher than the global average of 15 percent. For the fourth consecutive year, MSPs report CryptoLocker as the top ransomware variant attacking clients (47 percent ) followed by WannaCry (44 per cent). However, the report also revealed that SMEs aren’t the only businesses being targeted by hackers – three out of five MSPs agree that their own businesses are being increasingly targeted by ransomware attacks.
Despite the business-threatening downtime implications of ransomware attacks, the report indicated that there is still a disconnect between MSPs and SMEs when it comes to the ransomware threat. 82 percent of MSPs are “very concerned” about the ransomware threat but only eight percent of those reported that their SME clients feel the same.
T
