"Cyber Resilience Melds Data Security and Protection"

Ransomware attacks are taking on new dimensions. As people's work habits, daily routines, geographic locations, and trust in institutions changed in the face of global political shifts and the COVID-19 pandemic, ransomware attacks took advantage of the opportunity to become more sophisticated and widespread. Although the basic tools of ransomware remain the same, attackers are exploiting global uncertainty to develop techniques that make extortion attempts more effective. For example, in a "double extortion" attack, bad actors both block a victim organization's access to data and threaten to release or sell that data. According to Alexander Applegate of the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox, "triple extortion" or "quadruple extortion" attacks, which also include Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks or threats to third parties, are now part of the modern risk landscape. Attempted attacks have become so common that they are virtually guaranteed. According to a 2022 Sophos survey, 66 percent of businesses experienced a ransomware attack in the previous year, nearly doubling the number from 2020. A 2022 report by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 79 percent of organizations were impacted in the last year. This article continues to discuss the evolution and targets of ransomware attacks. 

MIT Technology Review reports "Cyber Resilience Melds Data Security and Protection"