ALT Text reads: The ransomware threat is borderless. May 2021 saw a ransomware attack on the Health Service Executive of Ireland, restricting access to appointment data. Over in the US, an attack on the oil company Colonial Pipeline caused major disruption to gas supplies across the east coast.

ALT Text reads: Evolution of scale. Prior to 2017, ransomware primarily focussed on encrypting single devices. In 2018, the NCSC and the NCA observed this shift in criminal behaviour to conduct attacks against larger organisations, driven by huge growth in the availability and legitimate trade of cryptocurrency.

ALT Text reads: Opportunistic. Cyber criminals are primarily concerned with financial benefit and while occasionally a group will specifically target sectors where they have had previous success, the majority do not.

ALT Text reads: Poor cyber hygiene. Most ransomware incidents are not due to sophisticated attack techniques, but are usually the result of poor cyber hygiene such as unpatched devices, poor password protection, or lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA).