• Over half (55%) of organizations see malware and ransomware as an “extreme” threat. 
• Respondents believing a malware or ransomware attack is very (31%) to extremely (23%) likely to happen 
• Only 29% have implemented a Zero Trust Architecture which has emerged as one of the best approaches currently available to prevent cybercriminals from accessing critical systems and data. 

Here are more interesting findings from the from the 2021 Malware & Ransomware Report:  

• Recovering from ransomware is costing companies time and money   

When asked “How fast do you believe you can recover from a ransomware attack?” Nearly half (49%) of respondents said they would need a few days to fully remediate ransomware.  Interestingly, ten percent of respondents said potentially they would never fully recover from a ransomware attack. 

We found that companies suffer from productivity loss, system downtime and revenue loss as a result of a ransomware attack,” said Holger Schulze, CEO and Founder, Cybersecurity Insiders."

Speed of recovery from a ransomware attack is absolutely critical as business costs escalate with every hour the business cannot fully operate.”     

• Paying Ransom is not an option, but… 

When it comes to paying ransom to cybercriminals, the majority of respondents (68%) said they would not consider paying the ransom to recover data and systems affected by a ransomware attack.  

Surprisingly, thirty-two percent of respondents said they would “consider” the option of paying the ransom, if it meant they would free their data and systems. 
 

• Orgs are throwing more money to fight ransomware/malware 

With many organizations finalizing budgets for 2022, security teams are expecting minor to moderate increases to their malware/ransomware security budget.  Expected increases to budget range from 1-5 percent (24%), 6-10 percent (23%) and 11-20 percent (15%). 

However, thirty-two percent are not expecting any changes to malware/ransomware budget. 
 

• Security Teams face challenges both internally and externally in their fight against malware/ransomware 

 According to respondents the lack of budget (50%), evolving sophistication of attacks (49%) and growing proliferation of attacks (36%) were cited as the top three challenges that hinder them from improving their malware/ransomware defense. 

With seventy-five percent of respondents believing malware/ransomware will be a larger threat to the organization in the next 12 month, it is imperative they deploy security tools that is able to keep up with today’s modern threats. 

For more information on how Forcepoint can protect your organization from malware/ransomware, check out Zero Trust CDR.

Woody Mosqueda