Phishing and ransomware are serious problems that can steal or disable access to corporate or personal finances, sensitive employee data, patient data, intellectual property, employee files and other valuable content.
Both ransomware and phishing attacks and their variants – spearphishing/whaling and CEO Fraud/Business Email Compromise (BEC) – are increasingly common and are having devastating impacts on businesses of all sizes. The financial impact of cybercrime in general – and phishing and ransomware in particular – is hard to assess for a variety of reasons, but the FBI estimates that ransomware alone cost organizations $209 million in just the first three months of 2016i.
Phishing, which can be considered the delivery mechanism of choice for various types of malware and cybercrime attempts; and ransomware, which is a specialized form of malware that is designed for the sole purpose of extorting money from victims, are critical problems that every organization must address and through a variety of means: user education, security solutions, vulnerability analysis, threat intelligence, good backup processes, and even common sense. The good news is that there is much that organizations can do to protect themselves, their data, their employees and their customers.
