Costs of ransomware attacks will spike, forcing authorities to respond—#2021Predictions

by Callum Roxan, Head of Threat Intelligence

We’ll see various governments and law enforcement agencies become more active in fighting ransomware and try non-technical approaches to curb the problem.  

Most of the developments in ransomware in recent years haven’t been technical advances. They’ve been operational, such as combining ransomware with data exfiltration in order to diversify and maximize revenue streams. So we can expect various officials to follow suite and look at how they can use legal measures to fight the problem.

We may also see some sectors attract more attention from extortionists. For example, those with particularly sensitive data (such as legal), or those who’s operations are particularly susceptible to damage from ransomware (such as manufacturing). Costs of managing ransomware attacks will also increase, giving authorities even more motivation to try and address this problem.

These efforts will produce mixed results. The decentralized, splintered nature of the cyber crime ecosystem makes it difficult to disrupt with any sort of targeted measure. Attempts to restrict ransom payments to attackers, for example, sound good on paper. However, the business realities facing organizations and the availability of third parties to act as proxies for payments will limit the effectiveness of such strategies.