Learn how to protect your organisation from ransomware with our 2024 recommendations

Public Sector Ransomware & Extortion Action Plan

8 recommendations to improve your organisation’s security posture

With the attack surface of most public sector organisations widening dramatically, our Unit 42 Incident Response team found that a staggering 75% of ransomware attacks and breaches could be attributed to attack surface exposures.

Extortion groups take advantage of these attack surface exposures and are growing ever more sophisticated and dangerous each passing year. They use a variety of techniques and approaches to compromise public sector organisations, either to extort money, steal data or both.

And these groups vary from small criminal gangs looking for a quick payout to complex networks of hackers conducting espionage plots on behalf of nationstates.

In this report, we look to uncover the murky world of extortion groups, explain how they operate, the different approaches they use to infiltrate organisation and what decision makers should expect in the year ahead.