KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 16): British based security software and hardware company Sophos Group plc said there was an increase of 62% in ransomware attacks on the organisations surveyed in the global financial services sector, with 64% reporting an increase in attack complexity and 55% reporting an increase in the impact of attacks.
In a statement in conjunction with its sectoral survey report titled “The State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2022”, the firm said despite the jump in the rate of financial services ransomware attacks, the sector actually reported the lowest rate across all sectors surveyed.
Sophos said the survey polled 5,600 IT professionals in mid-sized organizations across 31 countries, including 444 respondents from the financial services sector.
The firm said when compared to other sectors, financial services organizations showed some of the highest resilience despite the rise in ransomware attacks, with:
- only 54% reporting that attackers successfully encrypted their data, compared to the global average of 65% across all sectors;
- 10% being able to get the entirety of their data back after encryption, compared with 4% across all sectors;
- 62% being able to recover from an attack in just a week, compared with the global average of 53% across all sectors.
It said this suggests that the financial services sector has developed strong layered defences against ransomware attacks, with 83% of the organizations in the financial services sector stating they had secured cyber insurance coverage.