Ransomware Roundup: 06.12.23

This briefing reviews recent ransomware trends: high rates of ransom payments with unreliable recovery, a major breach at MCNA Dental exposing personally identifiable and health information for ~9 million patients, and technical advances in criminal tooling such as the BlackCat/ALPHV “Sphynx” variant that increases encryption speed, stealth, and network automation. The report warns of growing automation across ransomware groups (Cl0p, Rorschach, Vice Society, Play), recommends resilience measures (backups, patching, access control, tabletop exercises), and highlights the ongoing risk of data exfiltration and double-extortion campaigns.