August 3, 2016
The numbers are startling.
Almost two-fifths of businesses in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany have been hit in the last year by a ransomware attack, according to a survey by security firm Malwarebytes.
Even bearing in mind that Malwarebytes is not coming at this from a neutral standpoint—it sells defenses against ransomware—the results of its survey are startling. The company found that nearly 80% of U.S. companies suffered a cyberattack of some kind in the last year, with 47% experiencing a “ransomware incident.”
Ransomware is a particularly nasty strain of cybercrime where criminals break into the victim’s computers and encrypt files or whole drives, then usually demand payment to give people access to their data. Victims range from individuals and businesses to universities and, disgracefully, healthcare providers.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Malwarebytes’ survey, conducted by Osterman Research, took in the experiences of 540 IT directors and managers, chief information officers, and chief information security officers from companies with an average of 5,400 employees.
The U.S. seems to be the hardest-hit country, with 22% of American firms reporting over 20 cyberattacks of some kind during the past year. For the other surveyed countries, that number ranged between 8-10%.
The numbers are startling.
Almost two-fifths of businesses in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany have been hit in the last year by a ransomware attack, according to a survey by security firm Malwarebytes.
Even bearing in mind that Malwarebytes is not coming at this from a neutral standpoint—it sells defenses against ransomware—the results of its survey are startling. The company found that nearly 80% of U.S. companies suffered a cyberattack of some kind in the last year, with 47% experiencing a “ransomware incident.”
Ransomware is a particularly nasty strain of cybercrime where criminals break into the victim’s computers and encrypt files or whole drives, then usually demand payment to give people access to their data. Victims range from individuals and businesses to universities and, disgracefully, healthcare providers.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Malwarebytes’ survey, conducted by Osterman Research, took in the experiences of 540 IT directors and managers, chief information officers, and chief information security officers from companies with an average of 5,400 employees.
The U.S. seems to be the hardest-hit country, with 22% of American firms reporting over 20 cyberattacks of some kind during the past year. For the other surveyed countries, that number ranged between 8-10%.
Specifically regarding ransomware attacks, almost half came from employees clicking on something they shouldn’t have in emails—this was a particularly successful tactic in the U.S. and Germany. The targets were mid-level managers or higher approximately 80% of the time.
Two-fifths of the time, the attackers encrypted data on more than one computer. In nearly 60% of cases, the attackers demanded over $1,000 to decrypt the data. In 1% of cases, they wanted over $150,000.
Of course, paying up doesn’t guarantee that all-important decryption. More than 40% of victims paid up.
Healthcare and financial services firms were particularly heavily targeted, and 3.5% of respondents to the survey said lives had been at stake. More than 60% of the attacks took a whole business day to clean up, and more than a third of victims lost revenue as a result of the attacks.
RATE CUTS EFFECTIVE
However, economists, including former top BoE officials, have doubts about how much good either rate cuts or more quantitative easing will do with both official interest rates and government borrowing costs already at or near record lows.
Charles Bean, who stepped down as the BoE’s deputy governor in 2014, said the Bank still had options, such as expanding the array of assets it buys beyond government bonds to include corporate debt or even equities. But that could put public money at risk and be politically difficult.
“If you go into buying equities, as the Bank of Japan has dabbled with … that is taking the Bank into quite political territory. If there was a decision to go that way it should be in conjunction with the Treasury,” Bean said on Tuesday.
Many economists also expect the BoE to revitalise its waning Funding for Lending Scheme or take other measures to tempt banks to lend at record-low rates.
The BoE will announce its policy decision at 11:00 GMT, and Governor Mark Carney will hold a news conference at 11:30 GMT.
The BoE will also publish the first exchange of letters between Carney and new finance minister Philip Hammond, who last month replaced George Osborne—the man who plucked Carney from the Bank of Canada more than three years ago.
Carney must write to Hammond because annual inflation was just 0.5% in June, far below its 2% target.
This is unlikely to be a problem for long. Sterling’s 12% slide against the dollar since the EU vote looks set to send inflation soaring above target.
But there will be a focus on any hint of extra government spending to support the economy, after Hammond said he may use a half-year budget statement in the autumn to reset fiscal policy.
News Courtesy : http://fortune.com/2016/08/04/bank-of-england-cut-interest-rates-after-brexit/