According to a new survey from International Data Corporation, more than one third of organizations across the globe experienced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the last 12 months. For those who fell victim to ransomware, it was not uncommon to have experienced multiple ransomware events.

“Ransomware has become the enemy of the day; the threat that was first feared on Pennsylvania Avenue and subsequently detested on Wall Street is now the topic of conversation on Main Street,” Frank Dickson, program vice president of cybersecurity products at IDC, said. “As the greed of cyber-miscreants has been fed, ransomware has evolved in sophistication, moving laterally, elevating privileges, actively evading detection, exfiltrating data and leveraging multifaceted extortion. Welcome to digital transformation’s dark side.”

Key Survey Findings

• The incident rate was notably lower for companies based in the United States (7%) compared with the worldwide rate (37%).
• The manufacturing and finance industries reported the highest ransomware incident rates, while the transportation, communication and utilities/media industries reported the lowest rates.
• Only 13% of organizations reported experiencing a ransomware attack/breach and not paying a ransom.
• While the average ransom payment was almost $250,000, a few large ransom payments (more than $1 million) skewed the average.

Greater awareness of ransomware incidents has prompted organizations to undertake a variety of actions in response, including reviewing and certifying security and data protection/recovery practices with partners and suppliers, periodically stress-testing cyber response procedures and increasingly sharing threat intelligence with other organizations and/or government agencies. Greater incident awareness has similarly prompted requests from boards of directors to review security practices and ransomware response procedures.

Analysis of the survey results also showed that organizations that are further along in their digital transformation (DX) efforts were less likely to have experienced a ransomware event. These are organizations that have committed to a long-term DX investment plan with a multi-year approach tied to enterprise strategy.

The report, IDC’s 2021 Ransomware Study: Where You Are Matters!, presents findings from the Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey of nearly 800 IT decision makers and influencers. The July 2021 survey focused on topics such as attention by the board of directors, ransomware payments, size of ransomware, number of ransomware payments and the exfiltration of data.