Particularly in a subset of industries, these teams find their organizations squarely in the crosshairs of cybercriminals during the holiday period, looking to profit.
These industries' increased time sensitivity, criticality, and importance during the holiday season make them particularly lucrative targets for ransomware and cyber extortion gangs.
In this article, we explore the sectors most at risk of ransomware attacks, why they are being targeted, how they are being attacked, what a successful attack means, and provide practical insights into steps they can take to prepare for inevitable attacks on their data and operations.
While you are stressing about missed flights, last-minute shopping, missing packages, your holiday budget, or suffering from the latest seasonal virus going around, cybercriminals are focused on the opportunities that your angst presents to put pressure on their targets.
The volume of personal information and banking data being collected to complete these transactions makes all these industries an enticing target for attackers - looking to gain access to data that can be quickly monetized.
Whether it's retail, healthcare, hospitality, banking, or e-commerce, organizations in these industries could face significant financial losses if their operations are disrupted during the holiday season, in addition to the impact on customer satisfaction and safety in the case of healthcare.
Compromised user accounts and stolen credentials are currently the most probable and straightforward attack vectors across all industries and will undoubtedly be used during the holiday season.
According to the 2023 Microsoft Digital Defense Report, over 40% of ransomware attacks were human-operated.
In the 2022 report, Microsoft indicated that 75% of these human-operated ransomware attacks involved using compromised user accounts.
A report from Zscaler Threatlabz earlier in the year indicates that phishing attacks rose 47.2% in 2022 compared to the previous year, despite the advent of phishing-resistant MFA. While some may dream of more fishing gear, everyone is likelier to receive a phish during the holidays.
Cybercriminals often impersonate online orders and track emails, charity solicitations, and messages related to holiday events to coerce individuals to provide them with initial access to these types of attacks.
Attacks will attempt to disrupt access to data through remote encryption and also increasingly exfiltrate data to set up the opportunity for double extortion attacks, in which they ask for additional payment to prevent further data disclosure.
An interesting influence on this decision is the focus of legislation on ensuring that organizations disclose ransomware attacks appropriately.
Regardless of your industry and the time of the year, all organizations should adopt a proactive cybersecurity stance against ransomware - starting with their data.
Symmetry Systems recommends five clear steps you can do now to better prepare for this holiday season.
Create/Update a Data Inventory: Know your data assets and their locations.
Regularly update the inventory as new data sources are added.
Assess Your Data Security Posture: Conduct a data security assessment to identify exposed data.
Identify and Remediate Any Publicly or Externally Exposed Data Stores: Regularly scan for publicly exposed data stores and secure them.
The post Preparing for the Holiday Ransomware Storm appeared first on Symmetry Systems.
This Cyber News was published on securityboulevard.com. Publication date: Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:43:05 +0000