Not all who pay a ransom successfully recover their compromised data

A new report by the CyberEdge Group found that 55 percent of responding organizations were compromised by ransomware in 2017, down from 61 percent in 2016.

How victims responded to ransomware

Respondents who were victimized by ransomware and who elected to pay the ransoms were asked if they successfully recovered their compromised data. Surprisingly, only half confirmed successful data recovery, while the other half acknowledged complete data loss.

It’s like flipping a coin twice consecutively – once to determine if your organization will be victimized by ransomware (55% chance), and then, if you decide to pay the ransom, flip it again to determine if you’ll get your data back (49.4%). The clear lesson here is the critical importance of maintaining up-to-date offline backups. Fortunately, there are robust, enterprise-class, cloud-based backup solutions on the market to aid in this endeavor.

Percentage affected by ransomware in the past 12 months

Once again, China (74.0%) and Mexico (71.9%) are atop the list of countries affected by ransomware, with newly added Spain (80%) in first position. Germany (39.2%), Japan (42.9%), and Australia (46.0%) round out the fortunate bottom three.

Key industries affected by ransomware, in decreasing order of frequency, include: education (60.3%), telecom & technology (59.9%), manufacturing (59.7%), retail (50.6%), finance (50.4%), government (50.0%), and healthcare (44.0%).