Black Friday risks and how to avoid them

This Friday, November 24, almost the whole world celebrates its birthday. Black Fridayliterally the next day Thanksgiving Day in the United States, where wholesalers and retailers offer many discounts.

However, during these busy times, there are a number of risks involved that should be taken into account.

Sophos shared the results of its sector research report: “The State of Retail Ransomware in 2023” which found that last year, only 26% of retail organizations were able to prevent a ransomware attack before their data was encrypted. This is a three-year low for the sector (down 34% in 2021 and 28% in 2022), suggesting the sector is increasingly unable to stop cyber attacks. ransomware which are already in process.

“Retailers are losing ground in the fight against ransomware. Over the past three years, criminals have been encrypting more of their victims’ data, as evidenced by the decline in the number of retailers stopping ongoing cybercriminal attacks. They must step up their defensive game by installing a security system that detects and responds to intrusions earlier in the attack chain,” said Chester Wisniewski, Global CTO, Sophos.

Additionally, the report found that for those retail organizations that paid the ransom, their average recovery costs (not including payment of the ransom) were four times the recovery costs of those organizations that used backups to get their data back (3,000,000 USD versus USD 750,000). .

“43% of retail victims reported paying a ransom, but the average cost of recovery for victims who paid a ransom was four times higher than the cost for those who used backup and other recovery methods. There are no shortcuts in these situations, and systems almost always need to be rebuilt. “It’s better to deprive the criminals of their spoils and rebuild them,” Wisniewski said.

Additional key findings from the report include:

• In line with a broader cross-industry trend, the retail sector saw the highest level of encryption in the past three years, with 71% of organizations attacked by ransomware saying attackers successfully encrypted their data.
• The percentage of retail organizations attacked by ransomware decreased from 77% last year to 69% this year.
• The percentage of retail organizations that recovered in less than a day decreased this year from 15% to 9%, while the percentage of retail organizations that took more than a month to recover increased from 17% to 21%.

Tips for Preventing Black Friday Attacks

Strengthen your protective shields with:

• Security tools that protect against the most common attack vectors, including endpoint protection with powerful ransomware and exploit protection capabilities.
• Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to prevent abuse of compromised credentials.
• Adaptive technologies that automatically respond to attacks, distracting opponents and giving defenders time to respond.
• 24/7 threat detection, investigation and response, either in-house or from a dedicated Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider.
• Optimize attack preparedness, including taking regular backups, practicing recovering data from backups, and maintaining an up-to-date incident response plan.
• Maintain good security hygiene, including up-to-date patching and regularly reviewing security tool configurations.