Ransomware attacks continue to be prolific

SecurityWeek reports that organizations impacted by ransomware attacks during the first six months of 2023 exceeded 1,500, most of which have been victimized by the LockBit ransomware operation, indicating the continued pervasiveness of ransomware attacks. Lucrative business returns and organizations' poor security posture have been driving the persistent growth of ransomware attacks, a report from Rapid7 revealed. Absence or lax enforcement of multi-factor authentication has been linked to almost 40% of ransomware incidents during the first half of the year, while only one organization has adhered to minimum security maturity recommendations, according to researchers. Threat actors have also been achieving continued success in exploiting old vulnerabilities in their attacks. "We don't want to see so many preventable attacks when we know that there are so many complex attacks that organizations are also struggling with. But the good news is that, in theory, implementing something like MFA is a known quantity and a defined action that an organization is able to take if it wants to," said Rapid7 Head of Vulnerability Research Caitlin Condon.