Dark Reading: Rising Ransomware Breaches Underscore Cybersecurity Failures

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned this week about an "imminent" threat of ransomware attacks against major U.S. hospitals and healthcare organizations.  But as Rob Lemos points out in this recent Dark Reading article, healthcare is just one of many industries plagued by ransomware – and hospitals aren't even at the top of ransomware gangs' target list.

Why? Lemos notes that the continued success of ransomware is due to failures by "multiple stakeholders to adapt quickly enough to the increasingly dire issues of cybersecurity (and) reign in malicious cyberattacks."

Cybercriminal gangs and other perpetrators rarely face consequences for their actions and enjoy relatively easy profits. Furthermore, the "continued vulnerability of corporate networks makes ransomware unlikely to go away," Lemos writes.

Lemos talked to QOMPLX CEO Jason Crabtree, who says that mitigating cyber risk is expensive for every business and hard to do right.

"Cybersecurity, clearly, is not something that every company is going to be successful in, even if it runs a great program and has the right people and does all the right things," Crabtree says. "You could still be targeted for a variety of economic or strategic reasons and have a problem."

Common steps to mitigate the risk of ransomware and other cyber threats include establishing a well-tested backup strategy and using tools to get good visibility into network anomalies, allowing security teams to head off  ransomware attacks.

Read the full story from Dark Reading here.