Ransomware is still a major threat for your business TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Ransomware is still a major threat for your business By Sead Fadilpašić published 26 August 2022 Businesses are not out of the ransomware woods yet (Image credit: Avast) Audio player loading… Ransomware continues to be the number one threat to large and medium-sized businesses, a new report from cybersecurity experts Acronis says. Based on data from the company's Cyber Protection Operation Centers, the findings say over-complexity in IT and infrastructure has led to an increase in attacks, with government agencies, as well as private companies of all sizes, being targeted. According to the report, over-complexity in IT and infrastructure has resulted in many organizations running, for extended periods of time, unpatched software. This, together with all sorts of malware, enables threat actors to infect company endpoints, steal sensitive data, encrypt it with ransomware (opens in new tab), and then demand payment in exchange for the decryption key, and in exchange for not leaking the stolen data to the public. Phishing for starters Software flaws aside, threat actors are also deploying numerous phishing campaigns, which seem to be working. In fact, nearly one percent of all emails contain malicious links or files, and more than one-quarter (26.5%) of all emails were delivered to the user's inbox. In other words, they weren't blocked by email service providers. Given the success rate of ransomware attacks, threat actors' appetite seems to be growing. As per the report, the Conti gang recently demanded as much as $10 million in ransom from the Costa Rican government and later published almost 670 GB of stolen intel. A separate threat actor called Lapsus$ stole 1TB of data and leaked the credentials of over 70,000 NVIDIA users. The group later stole 30GB of T-Mobile's source code. Read more> Ransomware is more of a threat to businesses than ever before > Ransomware payments are falling as victims refuse to pay up > Best firewall of today: top paid and free services The havoc ransomware operators are wreaking has caught the eye of the U.S. government, too. After last year's attack on Colonial Pipeline, a major oil pipeline in the U.S., law enforcement managed, albeit briefly, to shut down REvil, a major ransomware operator at the time. Today, it offers a $15 million bounty on any useful information about Conti's leaders. "Today's cyberthreats are constantly evolving and evading traditional security measures," said Candid Wüest, Acronis VP of Cyber Protection Research. "Organizations of all sizes need a holistic approach to cybersecurity that integrates everything from anti-malware to email-security and vulnerability-assessment capabilities. Cybercriminals are becoming too sophisticated and the results of attacks too dire to leave it to single-layered approaches and point solutions."Remove malware and viruses with the best malware removal (opens in new tab) tools right now Sead Fadilpašić Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he's written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He's also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications. See more Computing news Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to theTechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. MOST POPULARMOST SHARED1The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me27 new movies and TV shows on Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and more this weekend (October 7)3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4Microsoft Teams users are using it for a really bad reason, so stop now5Google Pixel Tablet is what Apple should've done ages ago1Best laptops for designers and coders 2The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4Microsoft Teams users are using it for a really bad reason, so stop now5iPhone 15 tipped to come with an upgraded 5G chip Technology Magazines (opens in new tab)● (opens in new tab)The best tech tutorials and in-depth reviewsFrom$12.99 (opens in new tab)View (opens in new tab)