Search and Destroy: 3 Methods of Detecting Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware is one of the fastest-growing security threats facing businesses today. According to Sophos, two-thirds of organizations were subject to a ransomware attack in 2021. These aren’t only growing more frequent, but also more expensive, with the average cost to recover from the most recent ransomware attack in 2021 hitting $1.4 million.

Therefore, you must have specific plans in place for dealing with these attacks, and a big part of this is being able to identify and neutralize any threats as early as possible.

The consequences of failing to stop ransomware

If the first you learn of a ransomware attack is when you come into the office and can't log on to your PC, or you open up an email demanding payment, it's already too late.

Once data is encrypted there are very few options open to you. If you've got backups, you can try restoring them and carrying on, and hope you haven't lost too much information. In some cases, decryption keys have been made publicly available to assist companies with retrieving data. Otherwise, businesses may feel they have to pay up in order to restore operations - a route that can come with its own range of risks, from ransomware authors failing to fully decrypt data to enterprises being seen as a lucrative target for future attacks.