Sophos, a global leader of innovative security solutions that defeat cyberattacks, has released its annual State of Ransomware 2024 survey report, which found the average ransom payment has increased 500% in the last year.
Organisations that paid the ransom reported an average payment of US$2 million, up from US$400,000 in 2023. However, ransoms are just one part of the cost. Excluding ransoms, the survey found the average cost of recovery reached US$2.73 million, an increase of almost US$1 million since the US$1.82million that Sophos reported in 2023.
Despite the soaring ransoms, this year’s survey indicates a slight reduction in the rate of ransomware attacks with 59% of organisations being hit, compared with 66% in 2023. While the propensity to be hit by ransomware increases with revenue, even the smallest organisations (less than US$10 million in revenue) are still regularly targeted, with just under half (47%) hit by ransomware in the last year.
The 2024 report also found that 63% of ransom demands were for US$1 million or more, with 30% of demands for over US$5 million, suggesting ransomware operators are seeking huge payoffs.
Unfortunately, these increased ransom amounts are not just for the highest-revenue organisations surveyed. Nearly half (46%) of organisations with revenue of less US$50 million received a seven-figure ransom demand in the last year.
“We must not let the slight dip in attack rates give us a sense of complacency. Ransomware attacks are still the most dominant threat today and are fuelling the cybercrime economy,” said John Shier, Field CTO, Sophos. “Without ransomware we would not see the same variety and volume of precursor threats and services that feed into these attacks. The skyrocketing costs of ransomware attacks belie the fact that this is an equal opportunity crime.
“The ransomware landscape offers something for every cybercriminal, regardless of skill. While some groups are focused on multi-million-dollar ransoms, there are others that settle for lower sums by making it up in volume,” added Shier.
For the second year running, exploited vulnerabilities were the most commonly identified root cause of an attack, impacting 32% of organisations. This was closely followed by compromised credentials (29%) and malicious email (23%). This is directly in line with recent, in-the-field incident response findings from Sophos’ most recent Active Adversary report.
Victims where the attack started with exploited vulnerabilities reported the most severe impact to their organisation, with a higher rate of backup compromise (75%), data encryption (67%) and the propensity to pay the ransom (71%) than when attacks started with compromised credentials.
The surveyed organisations also had considerably greater financial and operational impact, with the average recovery cost sitting at US$3.58 million compared with US$2.58 million when an attack started with compromised credentials and a greater proportion of attacked organisations taking more than a month to recover.
Other notable findings from the report include:
- Less than one quarter (24%) of those that pay the ransom hand over the amount originally requested, and 44% of respondents reported paying less than the original demand.
- The average ransom payment came in at 94% of the initial ransom demand.
- In more than four-fifths (82%) of cases funding for the ransom came from multiple sources. Overall, 40% of total ransom funding came from the organisations themselves and 23% from insurance providers.
- The majority (94%) of organisations hit by ransomware in the past year said that the cybercriminals attempted to compromise their backups during the attack, rising to 99% in both state and local government. In 57% of instances, backup compromise attempts were successful.
- In 32% of incidents where data was encrypted, data was also stolen – a slight lift from last year’s 30% – increasing attackers’ ability to extort money from their victims.
“Managing risk is at the core of what we do as defenders. The two most common root causes of ransomware attacks, exploited vulnerabilities and compromised credentials, are preventable, yet still plague too many organisations,” said Shier. “Businesses need to critically assess their levels of exposure to these root causes and address them immediately. In a defensive environment where resources are scarce, it’s time organisations impose costs on the attackers, as well. Only by raising the bar on what’s required to breach networks can organisations hope to maximise their defensive spend.”
Sophos recommends the following best practices to help organisations defend against ransomware and other cyberattacks:
- Understand your risk profile, with tools such as Sophos Managed Risk which can assess an organisation’s external attack surface, prioritise the riskiest exposures and provide tailored remediation guidance.
- Implement endpoint protection that is designed to stop a range of evergreen and constantly changing ransomware techniques, such as Sophos Intercept X.
- Bolster your defences with round-the-clock threat detection, investigation and response, either through an in-house team or with the support of a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider.
- Build and maintain an incident response plan, as well as making regular backups and practicing recovering data from backups.
Data for the State of Ransomware 2024 report comes from a vendor-agnostic survey of 5,000 cybersecurity/IT leaders conducted between January and February 2024. Respondents were based in 14 countries across the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Organisations surveyed had between 100 and 5,000 employees, and revenue ranged from less than US$10 million to more than US$5 billion.
