Year-over-year, the median initial ransom has risen by 20%
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A report by Arctic Wolf reveals that the median of initial ransomware demands is $600,000, representing a 20% increase. Legal, retail, energy and government industries saw medians of $1 million or more. In addition to increasing ransom demands, the report contains insights regarding incident trends as well as the continuing exploitation of previously established vulnerabilities.
One key finding from the report was that ransomware instances were outnumbered by BEC incidents by a factor of 10. However, when considering instances that led to an incident response investigation, ransomware events were 15 times more likely than BEC events to lead to such an investigation. The top three industries that appeared on ransomware leak sites were education and non-profit, business services and manufacturing.
The report also emphasized that previously established vulnerabilities were being exploited. Weaknesses identified in 2022 and earlier account for around 60% of incidents caused by leveraging a system with external access. As the tools available to cybercriminals continue to evolve, the report warns that vulnerabilities in security will become easier to exploit.
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