Organisations paid around BDT 7 Crore to hackers to get their data back: Sophos 2022 report reveals

Sophos, the world’s leading cloud-native security platform, recently published its annual review of real-world ransomware experiences in its State of Ransomware 2022 report. According to the report, 66% of the organisations in the survey suffered from ransomware in 2021.

The report was compiled by Sophos after surveying 5,600 organisations from 31 countries across Asia-Pacific, Central Asia, Middle East, Europe, Americas, and Africa. 965 companies shared their ransomware payment details during the survey.

The report also revealed that organisations that had their data encrypted in the ransomware attacks roughly paid $812,360 or over Tk. 7 crores to get their data back. Additionally, 46% of affected organisations that had their data encrypted paid the ransom despite having other data recovery methods, including backups.

The findings from the report confirmed that ransom payments are getting higher with time as more victims are paying with time. Apart from that, many global organisations depend on cyber insurance to help them regain their data from ransomware attacks. However, with growing cybersecurity threats, ransomware attacks cause a massive impact on organisations as it usually takes around a month to recover the data and recover from the attack. 

Some best practices that can help protect against potential ransomware and cyberattacks include reviewing security controls regularly to ensure that they meet the organisations’ needs. Keeping information backed up can also help reduce downtime if any unwarranted data breach occurs.