City Services in Baltimore and Maryland were complete overhaul earlier this year when a ransomware attack locked up computer networks and made it impossible for the residents to make different property transactions and pay their municipal bills. The official said that they have refused to meet the demands for ransom that is about $76,000 to unlock the systems but have calculated that an estimated amount of restoring and rebuilding the computer and systems will be close to $18 million. The dilemma for large cities such as Atlanta last year that were hit by ransomware that can shut down the critical services for the organization with outdated or vulnerable computer networks.
Two cities in Florida have already paid a total of $1 million towards the ransom this year, after which that new attack by the same group had hit the Georgia court system. The losses from ransomware rose by 60 percent last year close to $8 billion according to the data compiled by the Internet Society Online Trust Alliance. At least 170 counties, city or state government systems have been hit since 2003 with almost 22 incidents this year. The US conference of mayors that adopted a resolution opposing ransomware payments, we have also seen that consumer-centric are mostly the systems that are affected by the growing attacks.
Business is increasingly facing challenges, as making the system completely disconnected from global network is becoming close to impossible. The scale and scope of the problem are striking that is affecting everyone and with each type of attack and the number of attacks making the situation grim. The legacy solutions lack the required agility that can make the complete operation of business vulnerable, the predictive based security systems can add solutions, but it will not be the lasting solution.