SolarWinds Unlikely to Be an Isolated Event as Attackers Become More Sophisticated The researchers noted that, in addition to widening the attack surface, the shift to digital following the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed malicious actors the time, capital and opportunity to industrialize, leading to advancements in their operations. Nearly 40% of the 180 IR, cybersecurity and IT professionals surveyed for the study stated that double-extortion ransomware was the most observed new ransomware technique in 2020. In general, ransomware was a very prominent method employed, with 66% of those polled revealing they had been targeted in this way last year. There also appears to be a growing number of cyber-villains undertaking counter incident responses (IR), with 63% of respondents saying they saw this occur in 2020. Security tooling disablement (33%) was the most common counter IR technique witnessed, followed by DDoS attacks (26%), security tool bypass (15%) and destruction of logs (11%).