The Impact of Ransomware, Patterns and Types of Attacks and Organizational Measures Applied to Mitigate Ransomware Attacks

Abstract

Malicious hackers (Black Hat Hackers) are targeting business and industrial environments with a wide of variety malware attacks such as: worms, viruses, Trojan Horses and ransomware which disrupts or shuts down systems to obtain financial gains, power of knowledge, revenge, or any other purposes. Currently, one of the highest attacks comes from ransomware which numbers of submissions a year have significantly grown over the past few years where criminals look on security vulnerabilities opened due to the rise in remote working to obtain financial gains. Especially in this COVID-19 times where it the number of people working from home is rising more business have been left at risk from ransomware. Thereby, the height alert in preventing ransomware attacks is paramount to educate yourself, in addition, to an adjustment security policy in business organizations. Ransomware is not only created by cybercriminal for the encryption the networks with malware and to demand hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in different payment methods such as bitcoin but also threaten to leak stolen sensitive data if the perpetrators are not pleased with their ransoms where the law enforcement plays a crucial role to track this criminal’s money flow. This article aims an overall view about ransomware core concepts, the impact generated in current society and the role social engineering tactic plays for ransomware attackers. Lastly, we will discuss about the role of deterrence through security measures that will give insight to assure confidentiality, integrity, and availability to our data against ransomware attacks.