Historically, companies have focused on potential losses arising
out of cyber events impacting personally identifiable
information. The nature of this dialogue has begun to change
with catastrophic losses suffered as a result of the 2017
ransomware attacks, and in particular the petya and non-petya
attacks. Global ransomware damages are expected to exceed
USD5 billion in 2017, and to worsen in 2018.
Extortion demands stemming from ransomware attacks are typically
very small – less than $5,000, and oftentimes even less than
$500. Rather, the majority of losses resulting from
ransomware attacks comprise of the cost to restore/recover the data
and income loss suffered while the company is trying to restore its
data. Even if a company pays the ransom and obtains the
decryption key, restoring data is oftentimes a messy and time
consuming process, and we are seeing more situations where a
company's data cannot be fully restored.
