Next-generation ransomware

In recent years, ransomware has grown very quickly from relative obscurity to become one of the greatest cybersecurity risks facing organisations today.
Ransomware is not a new type of threat: it’s been around in its current form for over a decade. However, in the last few years, it has risen to prominence as an increasing number of variants were released into the wild – and several high-profile organisations fell victim to them. In the first half of 2017 in particular, the WannaCry and Petya/NotPetya outbreaks raised awareness of ransomware by causing damage to corporate systems that took some companies and parts of the public sector many months to recover from.

Organisations are now familiar with the threat ransomware poses, and are aware they need to protect their systems from emails and compromised sites that attempt to spread the malware, which can lock down systems and encrypt their files. But just because organisations are becoming more accustomed to dealing with ransomware, it doesn’t mean they can afford to take it any less seriously. Ransomware groups are now using a number of new strategies to catch organisations out.