The already mentioned WannaCry attack served as an additional impetus for increased interest in the ransomware problem on the part of research companies, and, as a result, it is now very well described quantitatively. According to the FBI, a certain surge in incidents occurred in 2015, when this organization registered 2.5 thousand requests from American companies against 1.5 thousand a year earlier, although here we are talking only about official requests. In 2016, the number of ransomware attacks, according to some data, increased almost 60 times. Now the total number of attempts to carry out attacks in the US alone can be counted in the thousands per day, and the potential volume of this illegal business is approaching $ 1 billion.
A detailed record of the current state of affairs naturally provides grounds for recommendations. In the foreign press, you can often find materials titled something like this: "10 ways to deal qatar whatsapp data the ransomware problem." These ten (eight, twelve or fifteen - depending on the material) recommendations can always be divided into groups. The first includes quite traditional methods of information security, the second - everything related to social engineering and educational activities among employees. We must not forget that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the source of ransomware is phishing, which is why attackers pay increased attention to those organizations where the level of IT erudition of users is not always high.
And the third group is recommendations related to IT architecture. Strong advice on using cloud storage or taking storage devices offline for as long as possible is very popular and very effective in this situation. Let's remember that the response to ransomware threats (at least today) is to increase the reliability of IT systems rather than their level of protection. As a result, the main and currently most effective way to combat ransomware is to create backup copies. According to KnowBe4, almost 90% of organizations that have been subjected to extortion now resort to it (and very successfully).