More than 2.3 million computer users have been targeted with ransomware during the last year, security researchers at Kaspersky Labs concluded in a report published last week.
It’s not just academic institutions and businesses which are targeted. On Friday, for example, Forbes reported that a NASCAR racing team recently agreed to pay an undisclosed amount after suffering from an infection.
Cyber insurance didn’t keep the University of Calgary from recently paying roughly $15,000 after being hit by hackers, but a college official said other schools should consider buying coverage after seeing first-hand how costly a cyberattack can be.
Speaking publicly about the incident Friday afternoon, Linda Dalgetty, the university’s vice president of finance and services, credited a cyber insurance policy purchased last year with helping the school bounce back after email and other services were suspended due to ransomware — an increasingly popular type of malware that encrypts compromised files and holds them hostage until a payment is made to cybercriminals.
“We can prevent as much as we can, but the reality is that cyber-criminals are very smart,” said Ms. Dalgetty according to the Calgary Herald. “They’re prolific, they’re everywhere and I don’t know of any entities that have not had some level of incursion.”
Global consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted the cyber insurance industry will be worth $7.5 billion by the end of the decade, and Rep. John Ratcliffe — who chairs the House’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies — recently called such policies a “valuable free-market tool in the ongoing effort to better defend ourselves against cyber risks.
No comments:
Post a Comment