Sponsored Feature You know a tech problem is serious when the White House holds a summit about it.
How Ransomware gangs steal money and get away with it
Ransomware is no longer a simple geek-borne annoyance; it is an organized criminal scourge. Research from the Enterprise Systems Group (ESG) found that 79 percent of businesses have experienced ransomware attacks in the past 12 months. Almost half were attacked at least once a month, and many reported that attacks occurred daily.
From the early days of enterprise ransomware, security professionals had one common guideline: back up your data. It's still good advice, even in an age of double extortion attacks where criminals exfiltrate victims' information while encrypting it. But there's a problem: attackers are very aware of your backup systems, and they search for them while looking for production data to encrypt or exfiltrate.
A typical ransomware attack starts when the attacker gains a foothold, often through phishing emails or exploited/unpatched vulnerabilities. Once inside, attackers aim to locate and encrypt production data to cripple operations.
