riday the 13th brings us the 13th publicly recorded ransomware attack of the new year, and the most significant to date.  Bad luck for Royal Mail as it continues to deal with a number of other issues impacting its services.

Sources say that the notorious LockBit gang was behind the attack – this doesn’t come as a surprise to us as our annual 2022 data found that publicly disclosed attacks by this group increased a massive 600% over 2021. While we wait to see the fallout from this incident, there is little doubt that the ransom demand will be in the millions and that the data exfiltrated in the attack will find its way to the Dark Web if a ransom isn’t paid.

With any luck, this attack will serve as a wakeup call to other organisations that new tactics to prevent ransomware must be explored in 2023 to avoid becoming the next victim.