Ritik Gupta
India tops the list of top 30 countries for ransomware attacks, with 68% of Indian organizations surveyed being hit by ransomware in the last 12 months. More, around 67% of Indian firms whose data was encrypted paid a ransom to procure their data.
Indian companies were the most likely to pay a ransom of all countries surveyed — the global average was just around 32%. These were all part of the findings of the ‘The State of Ransomware 2021’ survey carried out by the cybersecurity firm Sophos. However, the number of organizations hit by ransomware attacks has come down from 82% in the previous year. And 72% of Indian organizations hit by ransomware admitted that data had been encrypted in the most significant ransomware attack, down from 91% in the previous year.
Ransomware attacks have had substantial financial repercussions. As per the survey, the average total cost of recovery from a ransomware attack has more than doubled in a year, heightening from $7,61,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021 globally. In India, the approximate recovery cost from the impact of a ransomware attack tripled in the last year, up from $1.1 million in 2020 to $3.38 in 2021. The average ransom payment in India was $76,619.
The survey also said that 86% of Indian companies believe cyberattacks are now too complex for their IT teams to handle independently, compared to a global average of 54%.
Sunil Sharma, managing director–sales, Sophos India and SAARC, said, “While the proportion of organisations hit by ransomware has declined compared to the previous year, Indian organizations are still far more likely to be hit than those in any other country surveyed. This could be due to the high level of domestic ransomware in India, as seen by SophosLabs, leading to a situation where Indian adversaries are targeting Indian organisations.”
