Organizations in the oil and gas industry experienced a 935% increase in ransomware incidence between April 2024 and April 2025, Cybersecurity Dive reports.
Despite the surge in ransomware attacks fueled by growing automation and digitization in the oil and gas sector's industrial control systems, manufacturing, information technology, and healthcare continued to be subjected to the most intrusions over the same period, according to a report from Zscaler. The U.S. was subjected to 3,671 ransomware incidents during the survey period, which was higher than the number of attacks experienced by the next 14 most commonly hit countries, while data stolen in ransomware intrusions totaled 238 GB, which is 92% higher than the previous year. Further analysis showed RansomHub to be the most prolific ransomware gang during the April-April period, followed by the Akira and Clop ransomware gangs. Most ransomware intrusions over the study period were also observed to have involved the exploitation of key software flaws, including those impacting VMware hypervisors, Fortinet and SonicWall VPNs, and Veeam backup software.
Despite the surge in ransomware attacks fueled by growing automation and digitization in the oil and gas sector's industrial control systems, manufacturing, information technology, and healthcare continued to be subjected to the most intrusions over the same period, according to a report from Zscaler. The U.S. was subjected to 3,671 ransomware incidents during the survey period, which was higher than the number of attacks experienced by the next 14 most commonly hit countries, while data stolen in ransomware intrusions totaled 238 GB, which is 92% higher than the previous year. Further analysis showed RansomHub to be the most prolific ransomware gang during the April-April period, followed by the Akira and Clop ransomware gangs. Most ransomware intrusions over the study period were also observed to have involved the exploitation of key software flaws, including those impacting VMware hypervisors, Fortinet and SonicWall VPNs, and Veeam backup software.
