The evolution of ransomware in 2016
Kaspersky Lab has released its Story of the Year paper for 2016, which takes a look at the year’s major security threats.
“In 2016, ransomware attacks on business increased three-fold – which represents a change from an attack every 2 minutes in January to one every 40 seconds by October,” said Kaspersky.
For individuals, the rate of increase went from every 20 seconds to every 10 seconds.
“With more than 62 new families of ransomware introduced during the year, the threat grew so aggressively that Kaspersky Lab has named ransomware its key topic for 2016.”
Kaspersky said ransomware has become more sophisticated and diverse, “tightening its hold on data and devices”.
“Attacks on businesses increased significantly. According to research, one in every five businesses worldwide suffered an IT security incident as a result of a ransomware attack.”
“One in every five smaller business never got their files back, even after paying.”
“New approaches to ransomware attacks seen for the first time in 2016 included disk encryption, where attackers block access to, or encrypt, not just a couple files, but all of them at once.”
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