INFOGRAPHIC
South Africa exhibits highest increase in ransomware attacks
Sophos commissioned an independent , vendoragnostic survey of 3,000 IT , cybersecurity leaders in organisations with between 100 and 5,000 employees in South Africa and 13 other countries in the Americas , EMEA , and Asia Pacific . The survey was conducted between January and March 2023 . reporting that their organisation was hit by ransomware in the previous year , the same as in our 2022 survey . With adversaries now able to consistently execute attacks at scale , ransomware is arguably the biggest cyber risk facing organisations today .
The research revealed that the rate of ransomware attacks has remained level , with 66 % of respondents
While the overall reported ransomware rate remains flat compared to 2022 , the survey revealed variations at a country level . Singapore reported the highest rate of ransomware attacks in this year ’ s study , with 84 % of organisations being hit in the previous year . Conversely , the UK reported the lowest rate of attack , 44 %.
Austria reported the biggest drop-in rate of attack , down from 84 % of organisations hit to 50 %. South Africa had the biggest increase in attack rate , with 78 % of organisations hit in our 2023 survey compared to 51 % in 2022 .
The education sector was the most likely to have experienced a ransomware attack in the last year with 80 %, lower education and 79 %, higher education reporting being hit . Education traditionally struggles with lower levels of resourcing and technology than many other industries , and the data shows that adversaries are exploiting these weaknesses .
IT , technology , and telecoms reported the lowest level of attack , 50 %, indicating a higher level of cyber readiness and
22 INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA www . intelligentcio . com