The government sector and the banking industry were the most affected by ransomware attacks in 2020 accounting for 50% of all incidents, according to research from Atlas VPN.
Government organisations took the biggest share of ransomware attacks last year — 31 906, while the banking sector suffered 22 082 attacks. Other industries that made it to the top five include manufacturing (17 071), healthcare (15 701), and finance (4 917).
Ruth Cizynski, cybersecurity researcher and writer at Atlas VPN, says: “Financial organisations have always been popular targets among cybercriminals due to their wealth. In the meantime, the government and healthcare sectors are known to be especially vulnerable to cyberattacks. As the latter industries also played a critical role in dealing with the global pandemic last year, they became an easy prey to hackers.”
Like most cyberthreats out there, ransomware comes in many different types. However, some ransomware families were more popular last year than the others.
Out of all the ransomware types, WannaCry, also referred to as WCry, was most favoured by cybercriminals. This cyberthreat was responsible for 220 166 or nearly 87% of all last year’s top ransomware families’ attacks.
Locky ransomware also continued to plague organisations last year. There were 15 816 Locky cases detected in 2020.
Other ransomware families that were highly active last year include Cerber (5 448), Ryuk (3 376), GandCrab (2 326), Sodinokibi (2 275), Crysis (1 744), Crypwall (1 019), Egregor (827), and DoppelPaymer (526).