CoreTech Blog

Ransomware has emerged as one of the most dangerous modern threats to businesses, and when you consider just what’s at stake with a ransomware infection, you’ll realize we’re not exaggerating. The worst variants of ransomware will attempt to extort you through any means necessary, and when you don’t give in so easily, they’ll pull out the big guns: double and triple extortion.

The constant chatter about cybersecurity can really be overwhelming. While some Internet tales might be exaggerated, the reality is that these cybersecurity risks are a serious concern for every business. Is your organization truly prepared to confront the sophisticated digital adversaries of our time? Let’s take a look at three prevalent cyberthreats that could inflict significant damage on a business, and what you can do to keep them from negatively impacting yours.

We're all busy. Whether you're steering the ship or making sure the daily operations run smoothly, cybersecurity might feel like another drain on your time. Imagine a day when everything grinds to a halt, trust evaporates, or significant money vanishes into thin air. These aren't abstract fears; they are all-too-real consequences of cybersecurity oversights, creating moments that everyone in a business, from top to bottom, desperately wants to avoid… and can.

Despite some of the headlines that we saw last year, it wasn’t all bad news regarding ransomware. Critically, 2024 saw ransomware payments plummet by hundreds of millions of dollars… despite many large-scale attacks and one record-breaking whaling payment of $75 million by one victim.

This is undeniably great to hear… but with that in mind, we cannot let ourselves slip into complacency.

Businesses have seen an increase in cyberattacks, and this trend is not slowing down in 2025. Today, we want to explore what the future could hold so you can take these insights and apply them to your cybersecurity initiatives in the coming year.

By now, everyone is pretty aware of how cyberthreats can disrupt day-to-day life and cause a lot of trouble for businesses. This is especially true here in Nashville, as the last few years have seen multiple high-level attacks against local healthcare providers. 

A major problem with successful cyberattacks is that they tend to encourage more attacks in perpetuity. Healthcare providers have seen a staggering 264 percent increase in ransomware attacks over the last five years.

If we zoom out and look at small businesses in general, an overwhelming 85 percent of ransomware attacks target small businesses. These attacks tend to go unnoticed by the general population of Nashville, as they don’t affect as many customers or end up getting covered on the news. Still, cyberthreats can cause major disruptions to businesses and lead to extremely costly consequences.

It's time to buckle up and get serious about cybersecurity.

Let’s have a little fun today. Today’s blog post is written in the format of a daytime soap opera. Please make sure you read all of the dialogue as if being whispered by extremely attractive television stars and starlets!

Life goes on in the small town of Oak Falls, deep woods surrounding the little hamlet nestled on the coast of Cape Seguridad. Let’s follow the lives of some of the residents, their lives Of Vice… and Vulnerability.

One of the worst things that can happen to any organization is to be infiltrated with ransomware. Ransomware is a strain of malware that allows hackers to lock down files or computing systems and then ransom access back to the organization. It can really be a problem.

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing ransomware's impacts on different subsets. First, we discussed how a ransomware attack impacts the customers of the infected business, and then we touched on the infected business itself. To end, we want to touch on ransomware's impacts on society, specifically regarding economic health and geopolitical security, known as third-order harms.

Last week, we discussed the many impacts your business suffering from ransomware has on “second-order harm,” downstream businesses, and average, ordinary people. This time, we wanted to return to “first-order harms”… those the impacted business has to deal with itself.

It can be too easy to look at ransomware as a business problem. After all, it attacks businesses, locking down their data for ransom, often selling it or spreading it, and sometimes altering it for the business if returning it at all. It can be too easy to overlook another impacted target in all the mess.

What happens to the people whose data a business has collected and uses?

When considering your company’s cybersecurity, it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees… or, in other words, not to forget the basics around which the rest of your protections are built.

We’re hoping that you are actually reading this post to prepare yourself if your business were to face a ransomware attack, but if you are suffering from one right now, we encourage you to reach out to us immediately, whether you are a client or not. Ransomware spreads quickly, and once it has infected a system, there really isn’t much you can do to stop it. However, there are steps you need to take to come back from this gracefully.

With ransomware becoming one of the single most dangerous threats out there for small businesses, it’s more important than ever to know how to protect your company from its influence. Thankfully, there are measures you can take, including some very powerful ones like zero-trust policies that can thwart attempted ransomware attacks.

You don’t need us to tell you that ransomware is a problem (or maybe you do–we mean, it’s a huge problem). It’s dangerous to both businesses and individuals, and it has become such a common threat that all organizations need to have a plan in place to address it with their staff. Today, we want to highlight a three-part strategy that you can use to approach ransomware in the most secure way possible.

There are a lot of threats to businesses nowadays, but ransomware seems to be the worst… or at least, the most feared. It seems as though we can’t mention cyberthreats anymore without mentioning ransomware. Unfortunately, we’re right to do so, and the reason for this is a simple one.

Of all the cybersecurity threats out there for your business to contend with, there are going to be a few of them that are just more likely to impact you than others. That’s just a statistical reality. Fortunately, these threats can be addressed, so let’s discuss how you can do so.

Ransomware is one of the worst situations that any business could have to deal with. It not only holds your data or computing infrastructure for ransom, it also creates situations where you have to explain to your clientele that you’ve been breached and that their information has fallen into the hands of scammers looking to extort your business. This month, we thought we would take you through a ransomware attack to give you an idea of just how unpleasant it is. 

Okay, let’s say you’ve been infected by a ransomware attack, and (against our advice) you’ve elected to pay the ransom. That’s the biggest cost that comes with it, right?

Unfortunately, wrong. A ransomware attack comes with a lot more financial impact than just the payment the attacker demands. Let’s go over some of these other costs that can actually outpace that of the ransom.

Let’s begin by making one thing abundantly clear—all businesses and industries could potentially be targeted by ransomware, regardless of their size or target audience. However, as of late, some industries have been targeted more and more. Let’s examine some of the commonly targeted industries that ransomware is frequently waged against.