Most companies hit by one or more ransomware attacks annually

VentureBeat reports that 85% of companies in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France were hit by one or more ransomware attacks annually, on average, while 74% were impacted by multiple attacks. Seventy-two percent of surveyed firms reported providing ransom payments, with 42% saying they paid most or all of the time they have been affected by attacks even if such payments have been discouraged by the FBI, according to an ExtraHop study. The findings also showed that while 77% of IT decision-makers reported being very or totally confident of their organizations' cybersecurity threat mitigation capabilities, 64% have attributed cybersecurity incidents to archaic IT security programs. Many organizations have moved to advance their IT infrastructures amid the transition to remote working brought by the COVID-19 pandemic but failed to modernize the protocols they are using. Researchers found that 69% of respondents continued leveraging HTTP rather than HTTPS connections, while 68% continue to use the SMBv1 protocol, which has been exploited by the NotPetya and WannaCry ransomware.