Ransomware takes the lead in cyber attacks

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

ALL OVER THE WORLD, businesses are reeling from cyberattacks. The most common of these is in the form of ransomware.

What is ransomware? It uses malicious software, otherwise known as malware, which restricts a business computer’s access to files by encrypting them and then the criminal demands a ransom payment.

In other words, crypto criminals using ransomware hold that business hostage until the payment is made.

Bob Huber, chief security officer and head of research at Tenable, said these ransomware attacks were continuing to grow.

“It’s become a business,” Mr Huber told Talking Business. “The effort to start a business, generally considered a learning curve for any enterprise, takes years of effort and expertise. But ransomware, over the course of the last few years, has been an ecosystem that allows you not to have to be an expert to put out ransomware. 

“There are initial access brokers out there and providers and contract services,” he said.

“So I don’t have to be an expert myself to get into the ransomware game. I can actually contract those services out where I don’t have expertise. So, as much as I hate to say it, it’s lowered the barriers for entry to the market for most entities and organisations. It’s just not as difficult as it used to be years ago,” Mr Huber said.

“You can pick and choose the pieces that are already built. So you don’t have to develop the initial access or some novel attack to gain access or foothold to an organisation. They already exist. You can just click and build these things.”

Ransomware drives 38% of attacks

Ransomware has grown so much that Tenable research has found that it’s behind 38% of all cyber attacks.

Mr Huber said the growth of ransomware would continue as there were not that many businesses that are prepared to make the “commensurate investment in defending against ransomware attacks”.

This, he said, often came down to “foundational cyber hygiene”.

“If you think about organisations, whether they be non-profits, charities that don’t have mandates to make the investment … I’m sure they would like to but they compete against other businesses and risks, you know, economic down turn and pandemic, those are risks as well,” he said.

“They have to balance all those risks and determine where cyber fits into their risks and what they’re willing to accept or transfer. And especially for smaller organisations, they can’t make the investment to measure against those types of attacks.”

Remote work facilitates cyber attacks

Mr Huber said much of the growth of ransomware has come with more people working remotely.

“Given the proliferation of remote work… with people working from home and coffee shops and libraries, we found now that people do tend to travel, they still do their work but some of the controls you would traditionally have in an enterprise that [is] tied to certain types of access, through the facility or through a virtual private network, you don’t have that when you move to the coffee shops,” he said.

“There are other technical controls that were developed for a time when we expected folks to be in a facility,” Mr Huber said.

“And as we migrated to a remote workforce, in many cases we’ve had to loosen those controls to afford people to work from wherever to continue operations for the business.” 

www.tenable.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-27-interview-with-bob-huber-from-tenable

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