A new report by Verizon revealed the increasing number of ransomware attacks directed towards the education sector.
Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigation Report revealed the increase of ransomware attacks across educational services around the globe. The report also revealed that 80 percent of all cyberattacks are ransomware.
Increase in ransomware attacks
The data revealed that 92 percent of these attacks were motivated by financial reasons, while 3 percent were aimed to conduct espionage activities against businesses operating within the education sector.
Ransomware activities are growing at an extremely alarming rate. The attacks accounted for 49 percent of all cybercrime in 2019, while in 2020, they account for 80 percent of all cyberattacks.
One of the most common methods employed by attackers is the phishing technique. Most people fall victim to ransomware through browsing unsafe websites.
Verizon also revealed that the attackers do not need to operate the ransomware files themselves as they can rent the software as a service. The report also revealed that many companies do not have proper security measures to guard against ransomware attacks. As a result, the number of ransomware attacks has been increasing.
Furthermore, ransomware and other cybercriminal activities have increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. As most companies are operating remotely, many companies are vulnerable to the rise of ransomware during the pandemic.
Casey Ellis, the founder and CTO of Bugcrowd, stated that as “organizations shift to remote work, we can expect to see more targetted attacks against remote working employees.” She claimed that attackers would utilize outside perimeter vulnerabilities for greater effectiveness, such as subdomain takeovers.
Cryptopolitan previously reported that the Ragnar Locker attack deploys a virtual machine to bypass security measures; this type of malicious innovation only encourages these activities.
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