An incredible 77% of retail organisations
were hit with ransomware in 2021, a 75% increase in one year. This information
was published in Sophos’ The State of Ransomware in Retail 2022 report, which
found that retail had the second highest rate of ransomware attacks last year
of all sectors surveyed after the media, leisure, and entertainment industry.
Furthermore,
the majority of retail organisations hit by ransomware said the attack impacted
their ability to operate, and most said the attack caused their organisation to
lose business/revenue. These data points indicate that the operational and
commercial impact of ransomware on the retail sector was a little higher than
the cross-sector average.
“These
are scary statistics and point very clearly to the fact that ransomware is a
critical issue for many retailers. The Sophos report lifts the lid off the real
impact that ransomware has on retail operations. Because the ransomware
landscape is a complex, crowded and rapidly evolving ecosystem, it is advisable
to ensure that you have the correct mitigation solutions in place,” says Ross
Anderson, Sophos Product Development Manager at Duxbury Networking.
Retailers
continue to suffer one of the highest rates of ransomware attacks of any
industry. With more than three in four suffering an attack in 2021, it
certainly brings a ransomware incident into the category of ‘when’, not ‘if’.
In Sophos’ experience, the organisations that are successfully defending
against these attacks are not just using layered defences, they are augmenting
security with humans trained to monitor for breaches and actively hunting down
threats that bypass the perimeter before they can detonate into even bigger
problems.
This
year’s survey shows that only a quarter of retail organisations targeted were
able to stop their data from being encrypted, suggesting that a large portion
of the industry needs to improve their security posture with the right tools
and appropriately trained security experts to help manage their efforts,” says
Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist, Sophos.
As
the percentage of retail organisations attacked by ransomware increased, so did
the average ransom payment. In 2021, the average ransom payment was $226 044
compared to $147 811 in 2020. However, this was less than one-third the
cross-sector average ($812 000).
“It’s
likely that different threat groups are hitting different industries. Some of
the low-skill ransomware groups ask for $50 000 to $200 000 in ransom payments,
whereas the larger, more sophisticated attackers with increased visibility
demand $1 million or more,” says Wisniewski.
“With
Initial Access Brokers (IABs) and Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), it’s
unfortunately easy for bottom-rung cybercriminals to buy network access and a
ransomware kit to launch an attack without much effort. Individual retail
stores and small chains are more likely to be targeted by these smaller
opportunistic attackers,” says Wisniewski.
Additional findings include:
- While the retail sector was the second most
targeted industry, the perceived increase in the volume and complexity of
cyberattacks against the industry were slightly below the cross-sector
average.
- In
2021, the overall cost to retail organisations to remediate a ransomware
attack was $1.27 million, down from $1.97 million in 2020.
- When compared to 2020, the amount of
data recovered after paying the ransom decreased to 62%, as did the
percentage of retail organisations that got all their data back.
In
light of the survey findings, Sophos experts recommend the following best
practices for all organisations across all sectors:
- Install and maintain high-quality defences
across all points in the environment. Review security controls regularly
and make sure they continue to meet the organisation’s needs.
- Proactively
hunt for threats to identify and stop adversaries before they can execute
attacks – if the team lacks the time or skills to do this in-house,
outsource to a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team.
- Harden
the IT environment by searching for and closing key security gaps:
unpatched devices, unprotected machines, and open RDP ports, for example.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are ideal for this
purpose.
- Prepare
for the worst and have an updated plan in place of a worst-case incident
scenario.
- Make backups, and practice restoring
them to ensure minimal disruption and recovery time.
“We suggest speaking to our Sophos team to find the
right solution for retail operation cybersecurity, to ensure that ransomware
attacks are minimised,” says Anderson.