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Ransomware to dominate in 2017: Beazley

Source: Asia Insurance Review | Mar 2017

Ransomware attacks quadrupled in 2016 from the year before, with nearly half of them in the healthcare sector, and are expected to double in 2017, according to recent breach insights from Beazley’s Breach Response Services (BBR) unit.
 
   The report noted that organisations appear to be particularly vulnerable to attacks during IT system freezes, at the end of financial quarters and during busy shopping periods. Evolving ransomware variants enable hackers to methodically investigate a company’s system, selectively lock the most critical files, and demand higher ransoms to get the most valuable files unencrypted.
 
   The rise of unintended disclosure as a breach cause indicates that formerly small mistakes now have the potential to quickly lead to large data breaches. Employee education and training, up to date IT system protections and an incident response plan for when a breach occurs continue to be the best defences against these attacks.
 
   In 2016, Beazley’s BBR Services managed 1,943 data breaches on behalf of clients compared to 1,247 breaches in 2015. Those breaches, analysed, revealed the following findings:
  • Ransomware keeps rising 
  • Unintended disclosure becomes more dangerous
  • Financial institutions see more hacking attacks 
  • Higher education hacks are increasing 
  • Healthcare mixups drive breach exposures 
 
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