61% of organizations were infected with ransomware in 2020

Mimecast Limited published its “The State of Email Security” report. The report shows enterprises faced unprecedented cybersecurity risk in 2020 from increasing attack volume, the pandemic-driven digital transformation of work, and generally deficient cyber preparedness and training.

In fact, 79% of respondents indicated their companies had experienced a business disruption, financial loss or other setback in 2020 due to a lack of cyber preparedness. Respondents identified ransomware as the chief culprit behind these disruptions. Other insights include:

61% indicated they had been impacted by ransomware in 2020, a 20% increase over the number of companies reporting such disruption in last year’s “The State of Email Security” report.
Companies impacted by ransomware lost an average of six working days to system downtime, with 37% saying downtime lasted one week or more.
More than half (52%) of ransomware victims paid threat actor ransom demands, but only two-thirds (66%) of those were able to recover their data. The remaining one-third (34%) never saw their data again, despite paying the ransom.

The report also revealed additional threat trends, including:

A 64% year-over-year increase in threat volume.
An increase in email usage in eight out of 10 companies.
47% of survey respondents noted they saw an increase in email spoofing activity.
71% said they are concerned about the risks posed by archived conversations from collaboration tools.

All of these data points can be attributed to the pandemic: work-from-home increased email and collaboration tool usage, and threat actors sought to capitalize on the new “digital office” with massive waves of COVID-19-related social engineering attacks.

70% of survey respondents believe their business will be harmed by email attacks in the next year. In 2020, 59% of respondents said they felt this way.

The fifth annual “The State of Email Security,” report is based on a global survey of 1,225 information technology and cybersecurity leaders, and supported by Mimecast’s Threat Center data, which screens more than one billion emails per day.

ON DEMAND: Business-impacting events such as severe weather, man-made disasters, and supply chain disruption are increasing in frequency and making impacts around the globe.

In today's rapidly evolving security landscape, organizations face an ever-growing array of disruptive events, security threats and risks. Traditional reactive approaches to security intelligence often leave businesses vulnerable and ill-prepared to anticipate and mitigate emerging threats that could impact the safety of their people, facilities or operations.