The Impact of Ransomware, Patterns, Types of Attacks and Organizational Measures Applied to Mitigate Ransomware Attacks

Malicious hackers (Black Hat Hackers) are targeting business and industrial environments with a wide of variety malware attacks such as: worms, viruses, Trojan Horses, and ransomware, which disrupt or shut down systems to obtain financial gains, power of knowledge, revenge, or any other purposes. Currently, one of the most significant attacks comes from ransomware in which the number of yearly submissions has significantly grown over the past few years as criminals look on security vulnerabilities opened due to the rise in remote working to obtain financial gains. Especially in this COVID-19 times, where the number of people working from home is rising more businesses have been left at risk from ransomware. Thereby, a high alert in preventing ransomware attacksis paramount to educate yourself; besides, adjustment of security policies in business organizations. Ransomware is not only created by cybercriminal for the encryption of the networks with malware that demands hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in different payment methods such as bitcoin but also to threaten to leak stolen sensitive data if the perpetrators are not pleased with their ransoms. This article aims to provide an overall view about ransomware core concepts, the impact generated in current society, and the role social engineering tactic plays for ransomware attackers. Lastly, this paper will discuss the role of deterrence through security measures that will give the insight to assuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability to our data against ransomware attacks.

Author(s): María Luz Barreto Bermúdez

Abstract | PDF

Share This Article