Since data is the lifeblood of modern business, ransomware protection must be a top priority for enterprises, as cybercriminals are constantly targeting it.

According to the Zscaler Inc. “ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report,” ransomware continues to be incredibly popular among cyber threat actors based on its lucrative nature. For instance, the Dark Angels Ransomware Group was paid $75 million after a data breach, according to Brett Stone-Gross (pictured), senior director of threat intelligence at Zscaler Inc.

“Dark Angels actually operates in the opposite direction,” Stone-Gross said. “They actually don’t want to cause your business a disruption. They want to steal a vast amount of data that they can then hold up as ransom. We described in the report some of the companies they stole data from was between 10 and 100 terabytes of data. This specific company that paid a $75 million ransom is a Fortune 50 company. To them, obviously, they did some math and decided it was worth paying a ransom than risk that amount of data being leaked online.”

Stone-Gross spoke with theCUBE Research’s Principal Analyst Shelly Kramer during a SecurityANGLE segment on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed why ransomware protection should not be treated as a bolt-on. 

How AI fits into the ransomware protection picture

Safeguarding enterprise data should be top of mind, as this plays a pivotal role in ransomware protection. As a result, combating cyberattacks with enhanced monitoring and cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, should be the icing on the cake, according to Stone-Gross. 

“In terms of what companies can do, obviously, there’s a lot of technologies, including something that Zscaler offers,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunities where companies can do better, can deploy better solutions, better monitoring. There’s a lot of money being poured into AI to solve some of those solutions. AI could maybe assist with reducing all the noise and try to give you only things that require attention.”

According to the report, the energy, religious and food & restaurant sectors witnessed a 527.27%, 250% and 333% increase, respectively, in ransomware extortion attacks. This is a worrying trend that highlights the need for ransomware protection, Stone-Gross pointed out. 

“I think probably those organizations may not have the security solutions in place,” he said. “A lot of ransomware attacks are opportunistic. If you have a system exposed to the internet, maybe they don’t have a strong password, it’s easily guessed. Or maybe they don’t patch vulnerable software quick enough. Maybe some religious organizations don’t train their employees for proper cybersecurity hygiene.”

As companies continue collecting more and more data, they are becoming more likely to be targeted by bad actors. As a result, ransomware protection is more important than ever since attackers can leak the data or demand a ransom without necessarily making headlines, as evidenced by Dark Angels, according to Stone-Gross.

“What we’re seeing with Dark Angels is they haven’t really been in the headlines almost at all,” he noted. “They do that on purpose because they don’t want to be in the news. They get a lot less scrutiny from researchers, a lot less scrutiny more importantly from law enforcement. They’re actually more successful than nearly any other group, if not the most successful group, and for that reason, we ranked them number one in our ransomware report this year.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Brett Stone-Gross:

Image: SiliconANGLE/DALL-E