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Cisco 2016 Midyear Cybersecurity Report Predicts Next Generation of Ransomware

New Tactics Emerging to Maximize Profit

The Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) 2016 Midyear Cybersecurity Report (MCR) finds that organizations are unprepared for future strains of more sophisticated ransomware. Fragile infrastructure, poor network hygiene, and slow detection rates are providing ample time and air cover for adversaries to operate. According to the report’s findings, the struggle to constrain the operational space of attackers is the biggest challenge facing businesses and threatens the underlying foundation required for digital transformation. Other key findings in the MCR include adversaries expanding their focus to server-side attacks, evolving attack methods and increasing use of encryption to mask activity.

So far in 2016, ransomware has become the most profitable malware type in history. Cisco expects to see this trend continue with even more destructive ransomware that can spread by itself and hold entire networks, and therefore companies, hostage. New modular strains of ransomware will be able to quickly switch tactics to maximize efficiency. For example, future ransomware attacks will evade detection by being able to limit CPU usage and refrain from command-and-control actions. These new ransomware strains will spread faster and self-replicate within organizations before coordinating ransom activities.

Visibility across the network and endpoints remains a primary challenge. On average, organizations take up to 200 days to identify new threats. Cisco’s median time to detection (TTD) continues to outpace the industry, hitting a new low of approximately 13 hours to detect previously unknown compromises for the six months ending in April 2016. This result is down from 17.5 hours for the period ending in October 2015. Faster time to detection of threats is critical to constrain attackers’ operational space and minimize damage from intrusions. This figure is based on opt-in security telemetry gathered from Cisco security products deployed worldwide.