THE EVOLUTION AND MITIGATION OF RANSOMWARE: TECHNIQUES, TACTICS AND RESPONSE STRATEGIES

Ransomware is still one of the most current and dangerous types of malware on the internet. Ransomware is detrimental in its impact towards both personal and corporate entities, while its consequences are often financially and operationally disastrous. This paper focuses on analysing the ransomware threat capabilities and trends during the last ten years and how cybercriminals have updated their approaches to the threat. The research explores the evolution of ransomware, such as the ransomware-as-a-service (raas), second-stage extortion schemes, sophisticated encryption, and obfuscation techniques. Further, the study measures present-day mitigation measures like endpoint protection, employee training, and incident response systems and defines unmet needs in the present defensive measures. While the paper evaluates cases where organisations have successfully enacted response strategies, organization must ensure proactivity, backed-up presence and effective cybersecurity policies. In addition, the study expects future developments in ransomware attacks to involve artificial intelligence tools to enhance the strategies and attacks towards the key areas of interest, such as the healthcare and energy sectors. The study highlights the necessity for effective legal measures to counter the work of ransomware actors who operate internationally and offers improvements to the policy and defence measures.