Ransomware became extremely widespread and dangerous nowadays, but its impact is not always very clear to the world. The latest report indicates that ransomware can even block access of a computer to an entire network in just a few seconds, and it can take more than a week for most businesses to get their systems back online.
According to this report, which is published in The Grim Reality of Ransomware by Datto, business continuity solutions provider, and Timico, cloud service provider, businesses are suffering a lot due to ransomware attacks and mostly because they are completely unprepared and unplanned for such an attack.
The report considers account data which is collected from more than a thousand businesses which have fallen prey to the ransomware over the past year. Nearly 85% of the infected businesses had their files forced offline atleast for a week. A one-third of cases suffered through these issues went on a month of more.
What is even worse is that 15% of the total businesses targeted by this kind of attacks has never got their data back, which is a great problem created by the ransomware.
It can take ransomware less than a minute to lock down a system. As a matter of fact, 68% of respondents said that effects of an attack are almost instant with data systems becoming useless just within seconds.
“Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents have paid over $6,221(£5,000) to retrieve their data and 26% paid a fee of between $3,732 – $6,221(£3,000 – £5,000 ). Higher Ransomware fees are found in large corporates, with a third of corporate businesses paying over $6,221(£5,000 ) to recover their data compared to just half that number of SMEs (over 15%). The highest number of SMEs (35%) paid between $622(£500) and $1,866(£1,500) ransom fee,” the report reads.
On top of the ransomware they chose to pay, businesses also had financial losses. 53% of respondents estimated that it had cost the business between £1,000 ($1245) and £2,000 ($2,490) per day in lost revenue.