According to Cybereason cybersecurity researchers, ransomware attacks that occur on weekends or holidays tend to be more damaging to businesses than on weekdays.
Surveying over 1,200 cybersecurity professionals for the 2022 Organizations at Risk: Ransomware Attackers Don’t Take Holidays report, the company found that the majority of respondents said weekend ransomware (opens in a new tab) attacks result in higher costs and greater loss of revenue.
In fact, more than a third of respondents who were affected by such an incident over the weekend or over the festive period said they lost more money, an increase of almost a fifth (19%) compared to last year. The tourism and transport industries, as well as the education sector, have been hit the hardest.
Personnel issues
The reason is pretty obvious: less staff means slower response times, and slower response times mean cybercriminals have more time to wreak havoc.
Nearly half (44%) of respondents said their staff drops by as much as 70% on weekends and holidays. One-fifth (21%) operates a skeleton crew, as roughly one-tenth of a full team report to work. Moreover, only 7% of respondents said that between 80 and 100% of their cybersecurity team work during these periods.
The main challenge for companies – even large ones with more than 2,000 employees – is putting together an incident response team. Compared to weekday attacks, a third (34%) naturally said it took longer than usual, and 36% said it took longer to stop them and ultimately recover. 37% said it also took too long to assess attack range.
Cybereason concludes that ransomware continues to pose a serious threat to business, accounting for almost half (49%) of all incidents that SOC teams have to deal with.