Cyberattacks are the primary concern of today's organization; as of 2021, the major attacks are Ransomware attacks. Ransomware attacks are growing in severity, and being regular headlines in cybersecurity achieved national attention on cybercrime. Hackers are exploiting security weaknesses and accessing data of organizations, governments, and healthcare sectors, demanding tens of million dollars of ransom. Let's take a look at Top cyberattacks in 2021.
Top Cyber Attacks in 2021
1.
CNA
In March 2021, CNA, the largest insurance company in
America, was attacked by a hacker group encrypting 15,000 devices, including
remote employee systems. They gained access to the system and grabbed over
75,000 people's records, including names, SSN, and health records of every
individual. This attack is associated with a Chicago-based company, Evil Corp,
used as malware called Phoenix Crypto Locker. After two months, CNA has paid a
ransom amount of $40 million to recover the access to encrypted systems.
2.
Brenntag
In early May of 2021, Brenntag, a chemical distribution company, was attacked by the Dark Side Ransomware gang. The hackers gang encrypted data of over 150 gigabytes from their compromised network, and they demanded a ransom amount of over $7.5 million through bitcoin.
3. Colonial
Pipeline
In May 2021, Colonial Pipeline, a significant fuel
provider, was attacked by a Russian hackers group called DarkSide. This attack
severely impacted petrol, diesel, and jet fuel supplies over the East Coast of
America. They gained over 100 gigabytes of sensitive information and demanded
over $4.4 million through bitcoin.
4.
JSB Foods
In June 2021, JSB Foods, a Brazil-based meat processing
company, was attacked by a hacker group. JSB Foods are forced to stop food
operations, leading to a shortage of meat and increasing meat cost. This
disruption made the company pay the ransom amount of $11 million, the highest
ransomware payment in recent history.
5.
Kaseya
In July 2021, a Florida-based company, Kaseya, was attacked
by REvil, a Russian-based organization. They encrypted over one million systems
by sending Kaseya's Virtual System Administrator a fake software update. As a
result, this attack affected over 1000 businesses. And the group demanded over
$70 million through bitcoin.
How to prevent the next major attacks?
Recently, ransomware attacks have targeted many highly reputed companies and organizations. So, the drawbacks of these attacks can reveal the prevention methods to protect the data from attacks.
- A strong incident response plan would help to deal with ransomware events.
- Implementing security solutions would help prevent sensitive data from being compromised in cyberattacks. It also helps prevent hackers from accessing and encrypting data from an organization's systems.
- Limiting user access and control over data can mitigate the risks of attacks.
- Implementing strong security measures to protect sensitive data, such as encryption or tokenization, are a good choice.
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