ransomware in ENERGY
The State of Ransomware in Government
In 2023, the City of Dallas fell victim to a massively disruptive ransomware attack that took down critical services including 911 dispatch systems, putting first responders in the dangerous position of responding to emergency calls by radio only with no details about the incident.
Months later, the city had racked up around $8.5 million in losses in recovery costs, and more than 27,000 current and former employees and their dependents were notified that their personally identifiable information (PII) like social security and medical information was exposed in the attack.
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The threat to the public sector from ransomware attacks is escalating at an alarming pace:
The number of state and local government organizations impacted by ransomware attacks in 2023 jumped to 69%, a nearly 20% increase year-over-year.
Three-quarters of ransomware attacks targeting state and local government included the encryption of critical systems and data.
As few as 19% of the attacks targeting state and local governments were disrupted before delivery of the encryption payload.
Legacy security tools were simply not designed to address the unique threat that ransomware presents, and this is why we keep seeing destructive ransomware attacks circumvent these traditional security solutions and impact the public sector.
Calculate your risk exposure to ransomware
Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the most important metrics in your business. Cybersecurity is no exception. Modern solutions, like Halcyon's multi-layered protection with endpoint resilience, saves you from new ransomware threats, while saving your bottom line too.
Footnotes
Ransomware attacks are one of the biggest threats facing any organization today, and the education sector has been hit particularly hard:
Attacks targeting education institutions spiked to record levels in August of 2023 just as schools were getting ready for the fall term.
Minneapolis Public Schools were extorted for $1 million after attackers threatened to expose sensitive student data including info on sexual assaults, psychiatric diagnosis, abuse, truancy, suicide attempts, and more-
The nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse, which provides data services to roughly 22,000 high schools and 3,600 universities, was the victim of data exfiltration at the hands of ransomware attackers.
Legacy security tools (EPP/EDR/XDR) were simply not designed to address the unique threat that ransomware presents, and this is why we keep seeing destructive ransomware attacks circumvent these traditional security solutions and impact education organizations.
Calculate your risk exposure to ransomware
Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the most important metrics in your business. Cybersecurity is no exception. Modern solutions, like Halcyon's multi-layered protection with endpoint resilience, saves you from new ransomware threats, while saving your bottom line too.
Special Considerations for State and Local Governments
Budgets and bureaucracies compound the challenges
People and Processes
Legacy technical debt, underfunded programs, a shortage of security professionals, and a treasure trove of sensitive data make the public sector a primary target for ransomware operators.
Downtime and Recovery
From initial detection to full recovery, it takes on average 22 days (about 3 weeks) to restore operations following a successful ransomware attack. Government institutions cannot afford weeks of downtime and closures.
This is why Halcyon enlisted some of the top engineers, data scientists, and threat researchers in cyber security to develop the Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform.
Halcyon delivers a purpose-built ransomware prevention solution that provides multiple layers of prevention, detection and recovery through proprietary encryption key material capture that autonomously restores systems to operation in a matter of minutes versus weeks.
Motivations
Ransomware operators understand that the public sector needs to be more transparent than private companies, and they leverage this to put tremendous pressure on targets to pay huge ransom demands.
Empowering Government with Resilience
Defense Resilience
Existing EPP/EDR/XDR were not designed to stop ransomware attacks in progress. Halcyon AI/ML models are trained on millions of real-world ransomware attacks to fill the detection and prevention gap left by traditional security tools.
Stop Bypass & Evasion
Ransomware operators disable endpoint security tools with relative ease. Halcyon protects other security tools from being bypassed, unhooked, or blinded during a ransomware attack to increase ROI on all security investments.
Operational Resilience
Ransomware attacks are designed to be disruptive. The unique Halcyon encryption key material capture and anti-data exfiltration features prevent exposure of sensitive data and assure operational resilience against successful attacks.
Halcyon Offers the Most Powerful Ransomware Protection
Legacy security tools are failing to catch the telltale signs of ransomware attacks until it is too late, so we keep seeing destructive attacks circumvent these solutions.
Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform
Halcyon is the only platform to leverage advanced AI/ML detection models specifically trained to defeat ransomware. The unique Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform is easy to deploy, does not conflict with existing endpoint security solutions, and provides multiple levels of detection, prevention and recovery against ransomware attacks.
Talk to a Halcyon expert today to find out more and check out our Recent Ransomware Attacks resource site to get near real-time tracking of ransomware attacks, threat actor groups and their victims.
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