With organizations globally experiencing an increase in attempted ransomware attacks year over year, new data shows how the global average isn’t even the worst news.

If I was to change the headline to include “3% of organizations” in the article title, you’d probably ignore the article.  There’s something about how tangible “1 out of 34 organizations” sounds that makes it more realistic.

According to a global snapshot of the state of ransomware attacks by Check Point Research shows that while the global average sits at 1 attempted ransomware attack per 34 organizations (and that’s a 4% increase over the same time last year), it’s far worse for certain regions of the world:

• 1 out of 19 Latin America organizations have experienced an attempted ransomware attack (and that’s a 22% increase from last year)
• Africa also had 1 in 19 organizations experiencing an attack; a 7% increase
• While only 1 North American organization in 69 experienced an attack, that’ still a 25% increase over last year
• Europe only saw a 0.3% increase in attacks, and APAC actually saw an 8% decrease.

So, there are definitely parts of the world where either the risk of attack is much higher than the average or the growth numbers are extremely material. The Check Point data also indicates which industries are feeling attacks the most.  At the top of the global list are:

• Military/Government: 1 in 24 organizations
• Healthcare: 1 in 25
• Education/Research: 1 in 27
• Finance/Banking: 1 in 29

Check Point also makes some recommendations on which aspects of a cybersecurity strategy will best help to stop these attempted attacks from being successful. They include:

• Up-to-date patching
• Automated threat detection
• Anti-ransomware solutions
• Backups (with immutable backups)
• Security awareness training