For Mexican companies, breaches through ransomware attacks continue to represent a significant expense, because in addition to paying for information ransoms, these kidnappings carry a series of effects within organizations that also have an economic impact.
According to report e, presented by the cybersecurity firm Sophos, in Mexico, recovery costs are 2.03 million dollars, a figure that exceeds the global average, which stands at 1.85 million dollars.
Recovery costs, explained Juan Alejandro Aguirre, director of engineering for Latin America at Sophos, not only imply paying for the release of the information, but also represents the cost of other measures implemented by the company to recover its operations around that data. .
In this sense, it is relevant to mention that during 2020, nine out of 10 national companies paid the ransom of their information after a violation of this nature, even though paying cybercriminals is not an action recommended by cybersecurity specialists.
And it is that paying for ransomware is the least effective method to recover the information, said Aguirre, as it does not guarantee that it will be rescued in its entirety, in addition to that it does not allow companies to carry out “proactive and corrective actions on what happened or how to avoid being the victim of a similar attack in the future ”.
In this sense, the Sophos report indicates that globally there was a growth of companies that decided to pay for the rescue, as this figure went from 26% in 2019 to 32% in 2020, while the average payment for the rescue of information was $ 170,000. However, of the companies that paid for the ransom of their data, only 13% globally recovered the information in its entirety.
In contrast, one of the most effective ways to recover stolen data was the generation of backups on a constant basis, since 82% of the companies that carried out these actions recovered their information 100%.
Although Mexico was the country that spent the most on recovery costs after ransomware attacks, Sophos also highlighted that it was the second most affected nation by this problem, only behind Chile.
However, they highlighted that in Mexico there is no regulation that requires companies to report their vulnerabilities, which is the case in Chile. Therefore, the figure in Mexico could be higher.
These figures make sense in the context of the attack on the National Lottery, which was the victim of Avaddon, a group of Russian origin that violated the institution a couple of weeks ago, but which it only admitted on Monday, May 31. In this case, the hackers blackmailed by releasing financial, legal and human resources documents, as well as contracts and information about a case of harassment at the company.
Faced with this type of situation, Oscar Chávez-Arrieta, vice president of Sophos in Latin America, pointed out that governments should also implement cyber security measures just like private companies and not see it as a way to only protect business, but as a responsibility. .
Therefore, some of Alejandro Aguirre’s recommendations in the face of these problems are to assume that at some point the company will be affected, since companies that do not see themselves in this position, when they are violated, have a “more uncomfortable” position.
Likewise, the specialist highlights as something fundamental to have a good backup policy, as this will help not to pay for the ransom of the information, which also contributes to discourage the cybercrime industry.
