March 2019

For the first time in several years, ransomware has been dethroned as the most prevalent malware distributed in-the-wild, as an increasing number of threat actors have ceased the distribution of ransomware in favor of distributing other malware payloads that have spiked in popularity in 2018, such as banking Trojans and cryptominers. In fact, ransomware’s title as the “most prevalent type of malware” was stripped in 2018; the most prevalent type of malware distributed in-the-wild throughout 2018 was cryptominers.

What does this mean for the evolution of ransomware as a threat, and for organizations trying to protect themselves?

In this report, we examine the recent statistics and industry analysis around global ransomware attacks and predict how ransomware is likely to evolve as a threat in the coming years.