A Brief Study on Ransomware Attacks and Information Security

In recent times, Computer Systems, Mobile devices as well as Internet connectivity have become an indispensable necessity of our daily routine. With the growing use of computer systems, cyber platforms and digital media by individuals and organizations, it is quite common to store important business related documents, company records and personal information in the hard drives or other digital medias (ie. External hard drives, pen drives etc.). On one hand, digital storage of transaction records and information provides us with greater ease of access, revision and manipulation of the information but on the other hand it poses serious threat to the information if a strong security framework is not in place or common security practices are not followed by the user. Figure 1 presents the number of internet users across the globe as per the data from www.internetworldstats.com [1]. Recent attacks of Wannacry, Petya, BadRabbit, DoubleLocker android and NotPetya ransomware brought the attention of the global community towards the rising threat of cyber extortion through the utilisation of ransomwares.