So just how bad is ransomware and cyber security in general? To get an impression, lets look at the past week. Just over the past 7 days, there have been over a dozen major ransomware attacks, though a few have not been well reported in the news media. The fact is, we have fallen for a kind of creeping normality. It’s not normal and it should not be considered a routine thing to see this happen.
Starbucks Impacted By Cyber Attack
Stop & Shop Hit By Cyber Incident – May Result In Bare Shelves
Supply Chain Management Vendor Blue Yonder Succumbs to Ransomware
The City of Odessa, TX Experiences a Cyber Incident
Weeks Later, Problems Persist At Hannaford Supermarkets
Wirral University Teaching Hospital Experiences Major Cyber Incident
Retailers Struggle After Attack on Supply Chain Provider Blue Yonder
RRCA Accounts Management Falls Victim to Play Ransomware Attack
Aspen Healthcare Services Announces Data Breach
Zyxel Firewalls Targeted in Recent Ransomware Attacks
Fintech Giant Finastra Investigates Data Breach
The largest attack seems to have been on Blue Yonder, because, as a supply chain manager, they are actually impacting many other organizations. It’s not entirely clear if the attacks against retailers like Stop and Shop and Hannaford were entirely facilitated this way, but we know that hundreds of other small retailers are reeling in the face of this attack, which, like any attack of this type, is likely to facilitate even more attacks in the near future.
Of course, there were many others. What is not reportedly heavily is that small and medium companies are being hit by the dozens, if not hundreds per week. The result of which, has been a massive loss of opportunity, inflation and increasing economic losses funding a network of global terrorism. But last week was not even that bad. Now that we are entering a holiday week, we can be sure that attacks will go up, as they always do.
What is causing this? It’s a lack of attempts to beef up security, basically caused by complacency and intimidation. There is a great deal of “Risk Management Psychology” and business incentives involves in what causes this.
Much of the problem stems from the tech sector and from sectors like healthcare, which recently seem to have become numb to risk, perhaps due to the stress of enduring the covid epidemic. However, above all else it’s a regulatory problem. If any sector is to blame, it is the insurance sector, which has attempted to profit from this with increasing rates and blatant ignorance. The absence of effective insurance underwriting, which should reward good safety and demerit bad behavior has become a major stumbling block in attempts to improve overall cyber security.