British businesses are suffering significantly more damaging losses from ransomware attacks compared to the rest of the world.
UK organisations hit by ransomware attacks paid much higher ransoms than in other countries over the past 12 months, according to Sophos’ latest annual State of ransomware report, now in its sixth edition.
The study of 3,400 ransomware victims in 17 countries, more than 200 of them in the UK, found that worldwide, nearly half of businesses that fell victim to cyber criminal ransomware attacks still opted to pay a ransom to regain control of their data and systems, despite all professional advice to the contrary.
This means that globally, median ransom payments have halved during the past 12 months to around $1m (£740,000), which is being attributed to companies becoming more successful at minimising the impact of ransomware according to Sophos.
However, in the UK, organisations not only paid higher median ransoms year on year – $5.20m (£3.94m) up from $2.54 last year – but 28% of UK victims ended up paying more than what was originally requested versus the rest of the world, where 53% paid less than the sum demanded by the attackers.