How has Ransomware Impacted Your Organization?
Few words strike fear within IT departments like ransomware. The thought of a successful ransomware attack is enough to keep CIOs and cybersecurity leaders up at night. To address these fears, cybersecurity product vendors spend a lot of time touting their tools as the latest weapon against ransomware. Despite all the attention and tools, however, ransomware remains a persistent and formidable threat that continues to elude easy prevention.
History of Ransomware
While ransomware became a mainstream concern with the rise of CryptoLocker in 2013, its origins trace back to 1989. That year, an activist hacker distributed infected floppy disks at a World Health Organization (WHO) conference. Once accessed, the malware encrypted file names and demanded a $189 ransom sent to a P.O. box to restore access.
The dawn of the modern ransomware age first began in 2005 with the spread of PGPCoder which proved the viability of encrypting user data and demanding payment. Unlike earlier methods, PGPCoder leveraged the internet and email for distribution, a tactic still used by modern ransomware variants. setting the stage for the evolving threat landscape we face today.
A Bigger Threat Than Ever in 2025
One would think after 20 years that the world would have figured out how to put a stop to ransomware. The truth is, however, that in 2025, ransomware is a bigger threat than ever:
- According to Check Point Research, ransomware attacks rose by 126% in the first quarter of 2025, with North America accounting for 62% of global incidents.
- Honeywell’s 2025 Cybersecurity Report showed that ransomware attacks against the industrial sector jumped by 46% from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025.
- According to Black Frog’s State of Ransomware 2025 report, ransomware attacks surged 21% in January 2025 compared to the same period last year, with 32 distinct ransomware groups orchestrating these incidents.
- According to the latest SonicWall Threat Report, SMBs are facing a surge in ransomware attacks in North America of 8%
These disturbing statistics for 2025 come after a surge in 2024 attacks. In fact, according to the Cyberint Ransomware Annual Report 2024, the fourth quarter of 2024 recorded the highest number of ransomware attacks in any three-month period on record. With these numbers, it should come as no surprise that 6 in 10 businesses suffered a ransomware attack of some type in 2024.
What are The Multiple Threats of Ransomware?
At one time, it was thought that the key to recovering from a Ransomware attack was a 3-2-1 backup strategy. A 3-2-1 backup strategy is one where a company creates three copies of data, maintains 2 different storage types (logical, physical), and one copy off site. While a modernized backup system is a critical element in recovering from a ransomware attack, it only addresses one type of extortion threat. The latest ransomware variants deploy not just one, but two or three overlapping extortion threats:
- Data Encryption: The original threat in which attackers encrypt the victim’s data, blocking access until a ransom is paid for the decryption key.
- Data Exfiltration and Leakage: Before encryption, attackers steal sensitive data from the victim’s network. Should the victim manage to restore their data from the initial attack, the attackers threaten to publish or sell the data unless a ransom is paid.
- Additional Coercion Techniques: Attackers may go a step further by using the stolen data to pressure or extort the victim’s customers, business associates, or other key stakeholders.
This three-pronged approach dramatically heightens the stakes for victim organizations, forcing them into difficult decisions under multiple simultaneous threats.
The Complexity of Ransomware Attacks
One of the reasons why ransomware is so difficult to stop is that these types of attacks rarely occur all at once. Instead, they involve a multi-stage process that can span days or weeks to unfold. While there are many variants, they all follow a basic methodology:
- Stage 1: Ransomware is often delivered to the target through some type of interaction with a user. These can be phishing attempts to gain credential to access to company resources, a web link, or an email attachment. The result is an initial payload that is downloaded which establishes a connection with the attacker’s command and control station from which future attack phases will be implemented.
- Stage 2: With a backdoor established, the attackers begin their reconnaissance to find high value data that can be used for maximum extortion. This data is then exfiltrated and transferred to a secure external location to be used as backup leverage in the extortion process.
- Stage 3: It is here that the encryption process begins. This typically starts with targeting the victim’s backup systems first to undermine data restoration capabilities. Once the encryption process is complete, a ransom note is delivered, and the negotiations begin.
Ransomware is also Easy
For many years, businesses have relied on turnkey cybersecurity solutions to protect them from cyberattacks. Today, attackers use turnkey cybercrime. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) professional ransomware developers package their ransomware as ready-to-use toolkits and sell or rent them to affiliates under a subscription plan that sometimes even includes online support. The barrier of entry into cybercrime is now reduced to anyone willing to pay the subscription fee.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has also made ransomware attacks easier in multiple ways. AI is used to make social engineering far more persuasive and convincing. Attackers can craft convincing phishing emails that mimic internal communication in tone and style or even use audio and video to impersonate company executives. Machine learning (ML) algorithms are used to identify the most vulnerable targets and determine optimal attack methods. In some cases, AI can be used to mutate its own code in real time to evade protection or autonomously execute an entire ransomware campaign from start to finish.
Ransomware is a Crime of Opportunity
In a year when ransomware strikes every 14 seconds, protecting against these relentless threats demands more than a patchwork of security tools. The challenge has intensified as businesses increasingly adopt hybrid architectures and multi-cloud environments, exponentially expanding their attack surfaces. Most businesses lack the resources to secure every potential entry point across their attack surface. While that may be a sobering reality, the good news is that perfection isn’t the expectation. What organizations need is a reasonable security strategy that demonstrates due diligence and meets their duty of care obligations.
Ransomware is a crime of opportunity. Like a common street criminal that looks for easy prey, cybercriminals look for organizations that are highly vulnerable. Resilience starts not with more tools, but with a smarter posture composed of layered defenses, visibility into high-risk zones, and swift incident containment.
The Value of a Risk-Based Assessment
What you need is a strategic understanding of how best to protect against these and other threats. According to Sun Tzu’s classic treatise, The Art of War, “When you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.” By understanding where your organization is most vulnerable to an attack, you will be able to focus on how an attacker will launch a ransomware attack on you. This is where the value of a risk-based assessment comes into play.
HALOCK’s risk-based security strategy is unique because it synthesizes guidance and best practices from several of the most respected frameworks and threat intelligence sources in cybersecurity, including CIS® Controls, MITRE ATT&CK, NIST standards, and real-world threat data from the VERIS Community Database (VCDB). By integrating these frameworks along with our Duty of Care Risk Analysis (DoCRA) methodology, our Risk-Based Threat Assessment helps you understand where your biggest vulnerabilities are and what to do about them without wasting time or resources. Though every assessment is customized to each organization, the basic structure is as follows:
- Our assessment starts with conducting interviews with your team to get a clear understanding of how your current security measures are working on a daily basis, using the CIS Critical Security Controls as our guide.
- We then develop a comprehensive risk register that identifies your organization’s specific threats and scores for each relevant CIS control, providing a clear, measurable assessment of your current security posture and actionable insights for strategic cybersecurity improvements.
- We generate intuitive heat maps for each cyberattack type, including ransomware, that visually highlight your most critical vulnerabilities and highest-risk threats, enabling you to prioritize resources where they’ll have maximum impact.
Throughout your Risk-Based Threat Assessment, we provide guided analysis and tailored recommendations at each stage, ensuring you know exactly what to tackle first. You’ll receive a priority roadmap that strategically strengthens your risk posture by focusing on improvements where they’re needed most—no guesswork, just clear direction.
SUMMARY: The Risk-Based Threat Assessment objective is to identify high priority areas for preventing and recovering from a ransomware incident by understanding the deficiencies a company has in breaking the cyber kill chain and then recovering from an incident if it occurs.
The truth is that businesses have been battling with the ransomware threat for decades. The deciding factor in the fight against ransomware won’t be a tool set, but a strategic understanding of where your vulnerabilities are and how ransomware attackers will exploit them. Start your strategic initiative today by reviewing your working environment with HALOCK and reducing not only the attack surface of your enterprise, but the ominous threat of ransomware itself.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)
1. What is a ransomware risk assessment?
A ransomware risk assessment is a cybersecurity evaluation that measures an organization’s vulnerability to ransomware attacks. It examines systems, processes, and user behaviors to identify potential gaps that threat actors can exploit to breach defenses and execute attacks. The scope of the ransomware assessment is conducted and reported on per NIST CSF, NIST RMF, CMMC, and MITRE ATT&CK® matrix standards to make sure your security program is in alignment with your risk exposure.
HALOCK’s ransomware assessments and readiness reviews measure your organization’s preparedness for ransomware, enabling you to understand your current exposure, prioritize remediation, and close security gaps that attackers are most likely to target. The ransomware risk-based assessments are based on an organization’s critical assets and support security teams in understanding and aligning incident detection, protection, and response strategies based on frameworks and standards, including NIST CSF, NIST RMF, CMMC, and MITRE ATT&CK®.
2. How does a risk-based threat assessment work?
A risk-based threat assessment measures the potential risk a specific threat poses to an organization based on its likelihood to occur and the business impact of the threat. It then applies this analysis to security controls and countermeasures to create actionable risk-reduction plans.
HALOCK uses the MITRE ATT&CK® framework to map real-world adversary behaviors, techniques, and processes to your network environment and accounts so that your organization can understand which paths are most relevant to its environment. With this knowledge, security investments and security controls can be applied where the risk is the highest.
3. Why use the MITRE ATT&CK® framework for cybersecurity assessments?
MITRE ATT&CK® is a globally accessible knowledge base of tactics and techniques that adversaries use in their attacks. It is a valuable tool for security teams to identify, understand, and prevent future attacks.
HALOCK includes ATT&CK® in our ransomware and risk-based threat assessments to help organizations create more complete and robust visibility into potential attack vectors to avoid and prioritize defenses that best reduce risk.
4. How can HALOCK help prevent ransomware attacks?
HALOCK can help your organization prevent ransomware attacks by first identifying potential weak points with our compromise assessments, ransomware readiness reviews, and penetration testing.
HALOCK cybersecurity experts then work with your business to develop a risk-based security plan for attack path prevention that applies the MITRE ATT&CK® framework so that all attack paths and known tactics used by adversaries can be prioritized and defended, including your organization’s critical assets and incident response capabilities.
5. What are the benefits of a ransomware readiness assessment?
A ransomware readiness assessment identifies gaps in detection, response, and recovery processes BEFORE an attack occurs so an organization can significantly reduce downtime and have a documented, practiced, and tested incident response plan in place when attacks occur. This helps your business maintain “reasonable and appropriate safeguards” against ever-changing ransomware threats, per cybersecurity and data protection compliance standards and legal guidelines for HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST CSF, FedRAMP, GDPR, and CMMC.
6. How often should businesses conduct threat assessments?
Businesses should conduct risk-based threat assessments at least annually or whenever their cyber infrastructure or environment has significant changes, such as cloud migration projects, mergers and acquisitions, or extensive software and hardware updates, to ensure defenses remain effective against ever-evolving tactics posted to the MITRE ATT&CK® database.
7. What industries benefit most from ransomware and risk-based threat assessments?
Healthcare, financial services, education, legal, and manufacturing industries can benefit greatly from these assessments due to high data sensitivity and stringent compliance requirements, but every organization should have a ransomware readiness strategy and assessment built into their overall cybersecurity program.
HALOCK tailors ransomware and risk-based threat assessments to each industry’s cybersecurity risk profile, applicable regulations, and inherent legal obligations to third-party customers.
8. What makes HALOCK’s ransomware assessment different?
HALOCK ransomware assessment is unique in that it goes beyond vulnerability scanning to determine whether technical controls are in place to support cybersecurity resilience. We also uniquely apply Duty of Care Risk Analysis (DoCRA) and ATT&CK® mapping to our ransomware and risk-based assessments, ensuring not only the effectiveness of cybersecurity and IT controls, but that those controls are reasonable and appropriate under current cyber regulatory and compliance guidance and legal standards. This can ensure your organization is making reasonable and appropriate efforts to protect customers and suppliers — essential for demonstrating defensible due care.
9. What is the relationship between risk assessments and incident readiness?
Risk assessments focus on identifying and prioritizing potential threats and vulnerabilities that may impact an organization. Incident readiness, on the other hand, is the ability of an organization to quickly and effectively detect, respond to, and recover from a security incident. In short, an incident response plan (IRP) is a vital component of risk management as it outlines the steps an organization should take in the event of a security incident.
HALOCK provides both cybersecurity risk and ransomware assessments and incident readiness as combined services to help clients better prepare for and respond to not only ransomware attacks but also insider threats and APTs.
10. How can I start a ransomware or threat assessment with HALOCK?
Schedule a ransomware or risk-based threat assessment for your business.
Our experts will help you to scope the work and define a roadmap for risk-reduction aligned to standards, including NIST, CMMC, and MITRE ATT&CK®.
