GuidePoint latest data reveals alarming trends across industries, as ransomware activities surge
October 19, 2023 – Published on Industrial Cyber
Researchers at GuidePoint Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) published its latest quarterly ransomware analysis report highlighting a nearly 15 percent increase in ransomware activity since the second quarter. The researchers partly attributed this to the rise in the number of groups operating in the ransomware space, as there is a direct correlation to the number of public victims of ransomware. Additionally, the rise comes due to an increased number of ransomware groups, including 10 new emerging groups tracked during the third quarter, the largest number of new groups observed in a single quarter across GRIT’s data set.
“Q3 of 2023 marked the largest volume of public ransomware victims that GRIT has observed since we began tracking the ransomware ecosystem for the last 2 plus years,” Drew Schmitt, practice lead at GRIT, said in a Thursday media statement. “The ransomware ecosystem, as a whole, is on pace to nearly double its number of publicly posted victims year over year despite a lesser increase in the number of threat actors. This suggests that many of the groups we are tracking are continuing to increase their operational tempo, but also may be the result of many organizations not being willing to pay the ransom demand.”