Nexus Group

In 2016, one particularly scary form of malware plagued organisations large and small: ransomware. By employing elaborate cryptware, hackers use this method to encrypt files and prevent users from accessing their data until they pay a ransom. According to a recent study by the German Federal Office for Information Security, two thirds of German companies were affected by this cyber threat over the first half of 2016 alone. The results: considerable costs through outages or the preventive shutdown of IT infrastructures or production facilities, or the loss of data. Some companies even paid the ransoms.