More than seven in ten (71%) organisations in the federal government sector have admitted to being on the receiving end of a ransomware attack in the past 12 months.
This is according to the latest research by Bridewell, which has surveyed 519 staff responsible for cybersecurity at US CNI organisations encompassing civil aviation, energy, transport, finance and central government.
The survey found 44% of government organisations cited data loss as a key consequence of a ransomware attack, alongside reputational damage, loss of revenue from downtime and increased insurance premiums (43%).
Failure to deal with ransomware attacks can have serious consequences beyond exposure of confidential government or personal data. Stolen data can be used to influence elections, for example. Poor responses to ransomware incidents also encourage activity from hostile nation-state groups.
In addition to the growing ransomware threat, social engineering attacks are also widespread, averaging 17 incidents per year. The dual threat of ransomware and social engineering should increase pressure on federal government bodies to enhance their cyberdefences and response strategies.
The sector is, however, struggling to react quickly to cyberincidents and mitigate the damage they cause. With ransomware and social engineering attacks, the average response time in federal government organisations is seven hours. However, government responses to nation-state attacks (8.39 hours) are slower, albeit quicker than the overall average among US CNI organisations (13.91 hours). This is surprising at a time when nation-state threats continue to escalate, and Russian, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean-affiliated threat actors intensify their efforts in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts.
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