Ransomware attacks have been an increasing issue in the past five years, and in 2019, this threat evolved into a global technological hostage crisis.

When companies were not paying for the decryption key, they saw their data destroyed, published on the internet, or they became victims of an attack as retaliation for not paying the ransom.

Data shows a very big rise in ransomware incidents in 2019, doubling between the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019.

Ransomware affected companies in a wide variety of industries, in both the public and private sectors in all countries in the world.

Top targets for these attacks were retailers, manufacturing and transportation sectors, where downtime is detrimental to operations.
It added to the pressure to pay the ransom.

Another potential reason included the ease of exploiting legacy systems, and non-existent security in other sectors.

Healthcare organizations faced the wrath of hackers and ransomware in 2019. ,Attacks on the industry affectied many facilities and the threat to human lives compelled organizations to pay to regain control.