Ransomware has been a frightening risk to organizations worldwide for many years. Current traits present that ransomware assaults proceed to develop extra superior and chronic. It’s change into more and more clear that nobody is spared as cybercriminals perform assaults that even goal the kids of company executives to power ransom funds. Regardless of the high-profile takedowns of legal ransomware networks in “Operation Endgame” and “Operation Duck Hunt,” essentially the most infamous ransomware teams stay tenacious, shortly regrouping after disruptions and aggressively launching new assaults.
The Zscaler ThreatLabz workforce has simply launched its newest analysis on this essential ransomware risk panorama within the ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report, shedding mild on new knowledge and traits. ThreatLabz analyzed 4.4 million ransomware assaults blocked by the Zscaler cloud, amounting to a 17.8% year-over-year improve, and performed intensive evaluation of ransomware samples and assault knowledge. The report presents invaluable insights into main assault targets, essentially the most harmful ransomware households, and the evolving ways and calls for of ransomware risk actors. Most shockingly, it reveals that ThreatLabz uncovered a record-breaking USD$75 million ransom cost.
For a complete understanding of the ransomware panorama and methods to strengthen your group’s defenses in opposition to this pervasive risk, obtain the Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report.
5 key ransomware findings
The ThreatLabz workforce tracks ransomware exercise extensively to establish and perceive how these threats are evolving. The next subset of findings spotlight a number of the most distinguished traits and targets.
Prime ransomware traits
1. The variety of extorted corporations primarily based on evaluation of malicious knowledge leak websites grew by 57.8% year-over-year, regardless of regulation enforcement actions that embody legal arrests, indictments, and seized infrastructure. The report breaks down essentially the most important regulation enforcement operations in opposition to ransomware teams and preliminary entry brokers over the previous yr.
2. The usage of voice-based social engineering to realize entry into networks is on the rise—a way made fashionable by Scattered Spider and the Qakbot risk group.
3. The exploitation of vulnerabilities continues to be a prevalent assault vector for ransomware, emphasizing the essential want for measures like immediate patching and unified vulnerability administration, strengthened by a zero belief structure.
Prime ransomware targets
4. The manufacturing, healthcare, and know-how sectors have been the highest targets of ransomware assaults between April 2023 and April 2024, whereas the power sector skilled a 527.27% year-over-year spike.
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5. The United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and France have been the highest 5 international locations focused by ransomware in the identical time interval.
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Delve into these findings and extra knowledge in the full report.
$75M ransom cost uncovered
ThreatLabz recognized 19 new ransomware households this yr, rising the whole quantity tracked to 391 over the previous decade, as cataloged within the ThreatLabz GitHub repository.
With new and rising ransomware teams come new and ever-evolving strategies to maximise their operational impression and monetary positive aspects. This was evidenced by the record-breaking $75 million ransom cost uncovered by ThreatLabz. The report discloses the risk group behind this unprecedented cost—additionally named by ThreatLabz as one of many high 5 ransomware households that shall be an enormous risk to companies within the yr forward. Find out about their strategic method and why ThreatLabz predicts comparable methods will acquire traction amongst different risk actors.
The report additionally shares complete insights into the ways, potential impacts, and up to date actions of different ransomware households that ThreatLabz has recognized as high-risk and noteworthy for 2024-2025.
Stopping ransomware begins with zero belief
The rising quantity and price of ransomware assaults discovered on this yr’s report is a stark reminder that organizations should prioritize strong ransomware defenses. The https://www.zscaler.com/platform/zero-trust-exchange platform addresses this problem by providing a holistic method to stopping ransomware.
The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report offers important steering to this finish, together with:
The rising quantity and price of ransomware assaults discovered on this yr’s report is a stark reminder that organizations should prioritize strong ransomware defenses. The Zscaler Zero Belief Trade™ platform addresses this problem by providing a holistic method to stopping ransomware.
The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report offers important steering to this finish, together with:
- Preventing AI with AI: Find out about Zscaler’s AI-powered cyberthreat safety capabilities wanted to fight AI-driven threats.
- Zero belief structure benefits: Learn the way the Zero Belief Trade stops ransomware at each stage of the assault cycle:
- Decrease the assault floor: By changing exploitable VPN and firewall architectures with a zero belief structure, it hides customers, purposes, and units behind a cloud proxy, making them invisible and undiscoverable from the web.
- Forestall compromise: The platform makes use of TLS/SSL inspection, browser isolation, superior sandboxing, and policy-driven entry controls to forestall entry to malicious web sites and detect unknown threats earlier than they attain the community, lowering the chance of preliminary compromise.
- Eradicate lateral motion: Leveraging user-to-app (and app-to-app) segmentation, customers join on to purposes, not the community, eliminating lateral motion danger. It could additionally assist discover and cease doable attackers from shifting round by id risk detection and response (ITDR) and deception capabilities.
- Cease knowledge loss: Inline knowledge loss prevention measures, mixed with full inspection, successfully thwart knowledge theft makes an attempt.
- Ransomware prevention guidelines: Entry the newest greatest practices to mitigate ransomware danger and defend your group from current and rising threats.
Get your copy of the Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report in the present day. As ransomware threats persist, understanding the newest traits and potential implications of those assaults and assessing your danger will assist your group defend itself in opposition to ransomware in 2024 and past.
