In 2031, global losses caused by ransomware will exceed $265 billion
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that by 2031, ransomware will bring about $265 billion in losses to victims each year; this amount is based on a 30% year-on-year increase in damage costs over the next 10 years. A 2017 report of the company predicted that the losses caused by ransomware in 2017 reached 5 billion, which is a 15-fold increase from the 325 million in 2015. The loss in 2018 is expected to reach 8 billion, the figure in 2019 is 11.5 billion, and in 2021 it is 20 billion – an increase of 57 times compared to 2015.
At the same time, it also pointed out that as ransomware criminals gradually improve their malware payloads and related ransomware activities, a new attack will occur every 2 seconds in the future. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, these represent a significant acceleration in the development of ransomware.
In addition to the need to pay the ransom, the losses caused by the ransomware attack to the victim also include data damage or loss, downtime loss, productivity loss, interference with normal business processes after the attack, forensic investigation, recovery, and deletion of hijacked data and systems, reputation damage, and employee training costs for directly responding to ransomware attacks.
According to the report, ransomware attacks are almost everywhere. A recent study pointed out that 61% of companies reported being attacked by ransomware last year, with an average downtime of 6 days. Cybersecurity Ventures believes that although all parties are working hard to improve cybersecurity and combat cybercrime, the ransomware problem will only become more serious in the future
