Downtime and recovery costs totaled an estimated $18.8 billion from 79 ransomware attacks on governments in 2020, according to a new report from a consumer technology information site.
Costs jumped to $52.88 billion over the last three years from 2018 to 2020 for 246 reported ransomware attacks on state and local governments, school districts, utilities, and other organizations.
The site sourced specialist information technology news sources, data breach reports, and government websites and used data from studies on downtime costs to develop an estimated cost range.
According to the report, the number of ransomware attacks dropped 35 percent from 2019, but more than $1.75 million was paid in ransoms to the attackers.
Downtime ranged from several hours to several months with 39 organizations reporting 773 days lost to the attacks. Using that information, the site extrapolated the total downtime among the 79 governments to be 1,510 days.
Texas reported the highest number of attacks with nine incidents in 2020, including strikes on the Texas Court of Administration and Texas Department of Transportation. The attacks affected an estimated 58.3 million people.
New Mexico was the second-most-impacted state based on the percent of population affected. In January 2020, the entire population of New Mexico may have been impacted by an attack on the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission. With additional attacks on San Miguel and Rio Arriba counties in February and May of 2020, respectively, some New Mexicans may have been impacted twice.