FEATURE : CYBERSECURITY
ORGANIZATIONS MUST DEVELOP A PREVENTION- FIRST CYBER SECURITY STRATEGY AND BE PREPARED TO DEFEND AGAINST ALL POSSIBLE ATTACK VECTORS .
obtain tailor-made ransomware developed by experts and ready to attack their potential victims .
The lack of expertise of the threat actors commissioning these attacks still poses a threat to businesses and individuals as the RaaS platform and the associated services provide a lower barrier to entry to sophisticated targeted attacks yielding large profits .
While launching these attacks , these novice threat actors benefit from expert-level and sophisticated software to encrypt and decrypt files as well as 24 / 7 software support – hence they can launch their attacks more seamlessly .
Will this model add to the growing volume of ransomware attacks businesses face ? How can they spot and prioritize tackling professional vs novice attacks ?
The 2023 Unit 42 Ransomware and Extortion Report highlighted that ransomware payments reached as high as US $ 7 million in cases that Unit 42 observed in 2022 .
With the reduced barrier to entry that the RaaS model offers , it could cause a flood of new threat actors using ransomware and expand the risk of ransomware attacks .
An example is LockBit 2.0 , one of the RaaS groups that Unit 42 is actively monitoring .
In 2021 , a RaaS playbook from Conti was leaked , with instructions on how novice actors can compromise enterprise networks . Therefore , with minimum skills , threat actors can hunt for big corporations that can afford a high ransom .
The 2022 Unit 42 Incident Response Report outlined that as of May 2022 , LockBit 2.0 has published information from more than 850 organizations – accounting for 46 % of all ransomware-related breach events shared on leak sites within the year .
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