A new report from BlackBerry and Corvus Insurance finds that many businesses will struggle to bear the financial costs of ransomware attacks that are not already covered by their insurance companies, and that most of the businesses surveyed believe government should help victims recover from attacks that are linked to nation-states.
The report finds that 59 percent of respondents hope that the government would cover damages caused to them by nation-state linked ransomware attacks.
“Not only are there more ransomware threats than ever, but the criminals are more ruthless. They will iterate threats and wait patiently in order to extract maximum damage,” said Shishir Singh, Executive Vice President and CTO, Cybersecurity at BlackBerry. “For uninsured and underinsured organizations, this potentially puts them in extreme jeopardy.”
“The cyber underground is increasingly sharing learnings and partnering to make threats as efficient as possible. It’s vital businesses strengthen their security posture against these threats by supplementing insurance with a prevention-first software approach that lowers their overall risk,” Singh said.
The report goes on to detail how buying insurance needed to recover from ransomware attacks has become difficult due to the need to adhere to software-related requirements.
“Though it might sound counterintuitive, continuing to adhere to software requirements is one of the best ways to fight the ransomware industry,” said Vincent Weafer, CTO at Corvus. “In our portfolio alone, we’ve seen a 50 percent reduction in the ratio of ransom demands that end up being paid. Better software adoption is a critical element in better positioning organizations to stand up to attackers.”
