Cyberattacks frequently target healthcare and finance sectors

A survey of 461 professionals reveals that 48% of organizations in highly regulated sectors, such as healthcare, finance, accounting, and legal, have experienced major cyberattacks, including ransomware or data breaches. While 93% of respondents expect a cyberattack within the next 12 months, only 52% believe their organization is fully prepared to manage one. Notably, 45% of respondents indicated that IT or security teams frequently deprioritize security tasks due to competing operational demands.

In the financial sector, 51% of professionals reported having experienced a breach, a higher rate than other industries. The primary concern for 58% of professionals in these sectors is data breaches or intellectual property theft.

Effective ransomware recovery relies heavily on pre-attack preparations, such as the 3-2-1 backup rule: maintaining three copies of data, on two different media types, with one copy stored off-site and at least one being air-gapped. Experts note that the cost of a ransomware attack is often driven by downtime and forensic investigations, which can be up to 50 times higher than the actual ransom demand.