OK, panic—newly evolved ransomware is bad news for everyone

There’s something inherently world-changing about the latest round of crypto-ransomware that has been hitting a wide range of organizations over the past few months. While most of the reported incidents of data being held hostage have purportedly involved a careless click by an individual on an e-mail attachment, an emerging class of criminals with slightly greater skill has turned ransomware into a sure way to cash in on just about any network intrusion.
And that means that there’s now a financial incentive for going after just about anything. While the payoff of going after businesses’ networks used to depend on the long play—working deep into the network, finding and packaging data, smuggling it back out—ransomware attacks don’t require that level of sophistication today. It’s now much easier to convert hacks into cash.

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