According to Emsisoft, more than 200 organizations in the healthcare, government and education sectors will be hit by ransomware in 2022. This is the same number of incidents as the previous year.
In a new report, the security vendor reveals its own analysis of publicly reported incidents. The State of Ransomware in the United States: Reports and Statistics 2022.
Despite increased coordination of federal and law enforcement efforts targeting ransomware groups in 2022, the number of incidents was found to be largely unchanged from the previous year, especially in local government and education. I was.
Overall, the report revealed the following death tolls in the United States last year:
- 105 municipalities
- 44 universities and colleges
- 45 school districts operating 1981 schools
- 25 healthcare providers operating 290 hospitals
The average number of incidents affecting local government over the past four years was 102, compared to 88 in the education sector. In the healthcare sector, last year’s figures were heavily impacted by attacks against CommonSpirit Health, which operates 150 hospitals.
However, the findings have some important caveats.
First, there have been only a handful of ransomware attacks against civilian organizations reported so far, making it difficult to determine with certainty whether overall activity is trending upwards or downwards from year to year.
Second, Emsisoft itself admitted that it may have “significantly” underestimated the incidents reported in even the three sectors covered by the report.
“Please also note that this report only includes incidents involving attacks on infrastructure belonging to organizations in the government, education and healthcare sectors,” he added.
“This does not include attacks on private sector companies such as payroll or other service and solution providers that may have disrupted the operations of those sectors. It means more organizations will be destroyed by ransomware than the
Finally, they argue that the number of incidents may not reflect ransomware trends, especially if some victim organizations were able to prevent lateral movement after a breach.
