It’s time to clip Cl0p

Onomatopoeia? More like I-don’t-want-to-pay-ya. That’s right, this week I want to talk about the out-of-control rise of ransomware.

There were some other hot topics this week, like NAPCO’s sudden misfortune, but I’d like to hear from their earnings call next week for full context. Besides, all weekend I have heard about nothing but more and more ransomware incidents hitting some notable names.

I shouldn’t be surprised to hear about it either. According to the NCC Group’s July 2023 report we’ve hit record levels of ransomware, up 153% from last year. The main culprit of which has been Cl0p, who we’ve covered in articles here on Security Systems News (SSN) before. In July they were responsible for 171 of the reported 502 attacks in July. When the average ransomware puts an organization out $4.54 million dollars that’s a lot of money down the drain.

The most recent victims this week are CloudNordic, a cloud services platform that told customers to consider all their data as “lost”, although with the reassurance that none of the data had been stolen. The other big name this week is Japanese watchmaker Seiko, which was hit by the ALPHV (BlackCat) ransomware gang that you’ve also probably seen referenced in some of my news stories. While it wasn’t clear what data was stolen by the Russian group, Seiko did request that any customers and business partners to contact them if they’re contacted by the gang about their information.

One of my first blogs after starting here at SSN was about the rising danger of data breaches. It’s one of those topics that I hate being right about, but if it wasn’t then, I can assure you now that the single greatest security threat to any business or organization is data breaches. In a world where information is king, it’s far too easy for criminal groups to exfiltrate data and hold it hostage.  

As a result, securing that data is the single greatest challenge facing the cybersecurity industry. Who’s going to step up with a solution?

Someone tell Bonnie Tyler we need a hero.