HOW MUCH RANSOM WOULD YOU PAY FOR YOUR ONLINE INFORMATION?

Information security has become one of the gravest threats facing organizations, consumers and government entities in the past decade. Now that virtually all companies have embraced the era of digitization, hackers and malicious parties are relevant risks in every industry and region of the country.

Consider the following statistics:

• The 2016 Ponemon cost of data breach report found that the average financial loss companies experience for each event hit $4 million in 2015, which was higher than the $3.8 million recorded one year earlier.
• The Identity Theft Resource Center, which aggregates instances of data loss and theft, counted 1,093 data breaches among organizations in 2016, the highest figure ever.
• Small Business Trends, an online publication, explains that 43% of all cyber attacks counted in 2015 were aimed at small businesses. This share represented more than double the frequency of 18% recorded in 2011.

Many small businesses would not be able to foot the bill of a major data breach. What’s more, they need to take significant and intelligent measures to protect themselves against cyber risks.

Let’s focus on one of the threats that has become a hacker’s favorite tool: ransomware.

What is ransomware?
Ransomware is a type of malware ─the term used to describe malicious software ─ that infects a device and essentially makes files and data inaccessible to the owner. An individual who experiences this attack will often try to turn on a mobile phone or open an app but will not be able to. Then, the victim will get a message that demands a ransom be sent to a certain account to unlock the files.

Ransomware presents a range of problems to businesses. In April 2016, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation explained that it saw a substantial increase in the number of ransomware attacks on businesses compared to the year prior.   Read Full Article