There was an increase in losses by 33 percent in 2024.
Losses reported to the FBI amounted to more than $16 Billion last year despite its efforts to “make it harder, and more costly, for malicious actors to succeed.”
In its annual report, the FBI noted that there has been an increase in losses by 33 percent year on year, whilst the most reports it received related to phishing and spoofing, with 193,407 reports.
Additional findings showed ransomware-related complaints increased by nine percent between 2023 and 2024, with Akira, LockBit, RansomHub, Fog, and Play being the most dominant variants.
Commenting, Dr Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at ImmuniWeb and a Fellow at the British Computer Society (BCS), said the most alarming thing about the FBI’s IC3 report is that its numbers are just the tip of the formidable iceberg of organised cybercrime. “A growing number of US companies prefer to silently “settle” with cyber-criminals, especially with those groups that have a good reputation and history of keeping their intrusions confidential after being paid,” he said.
“Sometimes, such payments may be perfectly legal, for example, when no personal data, classified or confidential data of a third party is stolen. Rules may be harsher for governmental entities, as in some states they are flatly prohibited from paying ransom, or for publicly traded companies given that such incidents may be required to be reported to the SEC and publicly disclosed.”
Kolochenko said that with the overall deregulation spirit of the President Trump administration, we will probably see a steadily growing number of organisations that will prefer to silently pay a ransom and forget about the incident.
“In all cases, the final decision to pay or not to pay should be brainstormed with cybercrime experts and lawyers having experience in such matters, otherwise, you are running a sprint on thin ice.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
