Bitkom surveyed more than 1.000 companies in Germany: More than half of the companies fell victim to ransomware attacks - over 30 percent suffered damage. One in eight companies paid the ransom.
Ransomware has become a lucrative business for cyber criminals in Germany. In the past twelve months, 6 out of 10 companies (60 percent) were attacked in this way, 29 percent suffered no damage as a result, and 31 percent suffered damage - for example through production downtime, costs for IT service providers or payments to the perpetrators. Around one in eight affected companies (12 percent) agreed to the financial demands. Three quarters (76 percent) say they have not paid anything to the criminals, 12 percent do not want to or cannot provide any information on this.
12 percent paid the ransom
These are the results of a study commissioned by the digital association Bitkom, for which more than 1.000 companies were surveyed representatively. Four out of ten (40 percent) of the affected companies were able to restore their data themselves, 10 percent got it back from the perpetrators without paying a ransom. Only 1 percent said that stolen data was published. At the same time, 17 percent reported massive restrictions on business operations as a result of the attack. 42 percent admitted that they had not expected to become victims of a ransomware attack. And 54 percent have tightened their security precautions as a result.
After the attack, almost one in five affected companies (18 percent) contacted a service provider to get support against the attack. Around one in eight affected companies (12 percent) would have liked to do this - but could not find a suitable service provider. Overall, only 21 percent contacted a law enforcement agency following the attack. More on this in the Bitkom survey.
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About Bitkom
The overarching goal of Bitkom is to make Germany a leading digital location, to advance the digital transformation of the German economy and administration, to strengthen digital sovereignty and to achieve broad social participation in digital developments.