The first documentation of a ransomware attack was in the year 1989. A Harvard-educated biologist developed the malware where a compromised diskette named “AIDS Information – Introductory Diskettes” were dispersed to the attendees of an internal conference and spread to more than 90 countries. These give a concept to cybercriminals that they can monetize from ransomware attacks. Fast forward, they started developing ransomware that can attack individuals, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and enterprise companies with complex IT cloud infrastructure.
The IT cloud infrastructure of today’s companies is becoming more complicated now that multi-cloud has grown in popularity. Companies started to embrace the cloud in response to the pandemic situation to support employees working remotely. Moving into the multi-cloud infrastructure means resolving scalability, availability, and performance. However, the wider the scale of an enterprise into cloud services, the more intricate to manage. The crucial part of dealing with a multi-cloud environment is to provide robust security on the network, data protection strategies, and backup and disaster recovery. With the rapid change in IT infrastructure, the vulnerabilities of the companies increase.
Cybercriminals are now attacking companies with multi-cloud infrastructure. The security measures deployed in the companies have not kept pace with the intricacy.
As companies’ operations become reliant on cloud services, cybercriminals advance their ransomware attack to expand the profit. Attackers are aiming for larger companies with more resources at risk. The analysis shows that 41% of companies attacked by ransomware experienced on-premises data interruption, 35% on the public cloud, and 24% affects similar infrastructures. Research responses from the conducted survey by a data management company demonstrate that 67% of the companies with over 20 cloud services takes five to ten days to recover the data. With this, companies with more cloud platforms tend to pay the ransom with the inability to restore the data as only a few companies have an off-site copy of their data aside from their data center.
As attackers continue to develop more ransomware for cloud infrastructure, the threat continues to rise. Companies should act now. Integrating into a cloud infrastructure requires that security should be a priority. An investment in security measures such as antivirus software and endpoint security, backup data, and behavioral analytical tools like SIEM should occur.
