Ransomware’s severity, frequency and impact has altered breach economics. New research from Thales finds that ransomware continues to plague global organizations. In fact, one in five organizations (21%) experienced a ransomware attack in the last year, with 43% of those experiencing an impact on operations.

Additionally, less than half of respondents (48%) have implemented a formal ransomware plan. Healthcare was the most prepared at 57% with a formal ransomware plan, and energy was the least at 44%, despite both sectors experiencing significant breaches over the past twelve months.

The accelerated move to the cloud is also causing more complexity and risk. According to the report, 34% of organizations are using more than 50 SaaS applications. However, 51% of respondents said it is more complex to manage privacy and data protection regulations in a cloud environment than in on-premise networks. In addition, only 22% of respondents said they have more than 60% of their sensitive data encrypted in the cloud.

However, the report suggests IT leaders are serious about tackling complex threat environments. A quarter (26%) stated that broad cloud security toolsets are the greatest future spending priority. A similar number of IT leaders (25%) stated they were prioritizing key management. According to Thales, while teams around the world have continued to face challenges in securing their data, the report’s findings indicate that urgent action is needed by businesses to develop more robust cybersecurity strategies, as the attack surface is only set to increase in the coming year.

The report was based on a global 451 Research survey that was fielded in January 2022, commissioned by Thales of more than 2,700 executives with responsibility for or influence over IT and data security. Organizations represented a range of industries, with a primary emphasis on healthcare, financial services, retail, technology, and federal government. Respondents represented a broad range of organizational sizes, with the majority ranging from 500 to 10,000 employees.

Read the full report by Thales.