Cyber Extortion: What Is It and What's the Risk to Your Business?

### Here's a topic that's been making headlines and causing sleepless nights for many: Cyber extortion.

Is it something that's on your radar? It should be, because it might affect your business one day.

What is cyber extortion?

It's a type of cyber crime where criminals threaten to harm your business by compromising its data and digital assets unless a ransom is paid. These threats often involve ransomware, a malicious software that encrypts your data, making it inaccessible until you pay the ransom.

Sometimes, cyber criminals go a step further by stealing data and threatening to release it publicly on dark web leak sites if their demands aren't met. This dual threat is known as double extortion.

According to a 2024 report, the number of victims of cyber extortion scams has skyrocketed by 77% over the past year. What's more, small businesses are four times more likely to be targeted compared to their larger counterparts.

In the first quarter of this year alone, 1,046 businesses fell victim to double extortion. That may not seem huge, but bear in mind the actual number is likely much higher since many cases go unreported.

How to protect your business:

- Regular backups – Keep offline backups of your critical data - Employee training – Teach staff to recognise phishing attempts - Patch management – Keep all software and systems up to date - Incident response plan – Have a plan in place before an attack happens - Cyber insurance – Consider coverage for cyber-related incidents - Multi-factor authentication – Add extra layers of security to your accounts

Don't wait until you're a victim. Take proactive steps to protect your business from cyber extortion.