As per a new report from Cybereason, organizations are much more vulnerable to ransomware attacks on weekends and holidays. Of the 500 UK security experts polled, 37% stated that their company did not have particular contingency measures in place to respond quickly to a ransomware attack over the weekend or during the holidays. This is despite the fact that all respondents worked for companies that had previously experienced a successful ransomware strike.
This lack of readiness has a severe influence on security teams’ capabilities. Over two-fifths of respondents (43%) said they needed more time to launch an effective response, and nearly a third (31%) said they needed more time to properly recover from an assault during the weekend and holiday seasons. However, 89 percent of respondents said they are concerned about attacks occurring during these periods.
Another alarming result from the research is that 71% of security experts acknowledged being drunk while reacting to a ransomware assault on a weekend or vacation. In addition, 91% of people said they missed a holiday or weekend activity due to a ransomware attack.
Inadequate security tools and solutions were also cited by 43 percent of respondents for successful ransomware strikes. Only 69 percent of firms had a next-generation antivirus (NGAV) solution installed at the time of the assault, 42 percent had a classic signature-based antivirus (AV), and only 36 percent had an endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution in place, according to the report.
The data support the idea that firms are much more vulnerable to cyber-attacks during weekends and holidays. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned ahead of Labor Day in the United States this year, stating that ransomware attacks are more likely to succeed at these times since IT incident responders won’t be on their desks.
