The ghost of Wannacry continues to haunt organizations and cybersecurity providers since it was discovered in May 2017. Fast forward to today, Kaspersky believes that with Ransomware 3.0, an attack similar in magnitude to this infamous ransomware can happen anytime.

Wannacry ransomware attack cost companies across the globe $4 billion. The numbers could be higher these days considering that there are other digital currencies (cryptocurrency) and more attack vectors available for cybercriminals to target.

By keeping data obtained hostage, cybercriminals can easily extort money from businesses, big and small. Based on Kaspersky’s anonymized data, it was able to block more than 300,000 ransomware attacks targeting businesses. In the Philippines, Kaspersky blocked 21,000 attacks against enterprises.

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“Ransomware threat will continue to be a menace for enterprises in Southeast Asia because it makes good money for cybercriminals, and also because some business executives think ransomware is just overhyped by the media, and because enterprise security teams are actually overwhelmed and undermanned to detect and respond against it,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia.

Kaspersky data show that 67% of business executives confirmed becoming victims of a ransomware attack and 82.1% paid the ransom in the past year.

But organizations are still undermanned and overwhelmed when it comes to securing organizations’ digital infrastructure despite the looming threat. According to Kaspersky, only 5% of enterprise leaders confirmed that they have internal incident response capabilities, or they have a regular IT team or service provider to figure out a ransomware attack.

Kaspersky XDR

To help organizations mitigate cyber attacks, the cybersecurity solutions provider launched the Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response (XDR), which provides more visibility by leveraging machine learning (ML) technology.

While cyber attacks have become more and more complex, Kaspersky is simplifying its offering by consolidating existing solutions and packaging them into one: Kaspersky XDR.

Victor Chu, head of systems engineering for Southeast Asia, Enterprise Cybersecurity of Kaspersky noted the challenges that organizations had to deal with when it comes to securing their digital infrastructure. This includes limited visibility, complexity, and human error.

“Kaspersky XDR offers flexible deployment based on an organization’s maturity approach, which can be determined by their resources or capabilities,” Chu explained. 

Kaspersky XDR is designed to provide response options that extend beyond infrastructure control points, including network, cloud, and endpoints, to deliver comprehensive protection. With ML, it can provide a large volume of alerts in a much smaller number of incidents that can be prioritized for manual investigation and are easy to manage.

“Kaspersky XDR enables organizations to have greater visibility and context and provide meaningful details associated with visibility,” Chu said.