Report: The cost of ransomware in 2020. A country-by-country analysis

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In The State of Ransomware in the US: Report and Statistics 2019, we examined the number of ransomware attacks on the U.S. public sector and the cost of those attacks. In this report, we will examine the number of attacks on both the public and private sectors for a number of countries and estimate the cost, including the cost of downtime, of those attacks on a country-by-country basis as well as estimate the overall global costs.

The calculation method and assumptions

• The number of incidents is derived from submissions to ransomware identification service ID Ransomware. Every submission to this service represents a confirmed incident, and there was a total of 452,151 submissions during 2019. 
  
• Approximately one-half of all submissions to ID Ransomware relate to a type of ransomware called STOP which has a below-average ransom demand and mainly affects home users. We shall, therefore, be reducing the submission numbers by 50% for the purpose of our calculations (the number stated in the tables is the actual number of submissions, but the calculations are based on half that number).
  
• We believe that only approximately 25% of public and private sector organizations affected by ransomware use ID Ransomware and so shall be providing two cost estimates: a minimum cost based on 50% of the actual number of submissions and an estimated cost based on that reduced number x4.
  
• The average ransom demand is $84,000[sup]1[/sup]. Note, however, that while we have based our calculations on $84,000, recent evidence suggests that this amount may have increased significantly in recent weeks.
  
• 33% of companies pay the ransom demand[sup]2[/sup].
  
• Ransomware incidents result in an average of 16 days downtime[sup]1[/sup].
  
• We were unable to find a reliable estimate for downtime costs across all sectors and sizes of businesses – Gartner previously put the average at more than $5,600 per minute – so we have used the extremely conservative figure of $10,000 per day. This figure that has no basis in reality and we have included it simply to illustrate the enormity of the costs. The actual costs are almost certainly much higher. As downtime is experienced whether or not a ransom is paid, the minimum cost is based on 50% of the submissions to ID Ransomware while the estimated cost is based on that reduced number x4. As above, we have reduced the numbers by 50% to exclude STOP from the calculations.
  

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