Introduction
Technology is used for ease and protection at the same time. The advancement in technology is happening day to day, and attackers are also advancing their technology to beat the system that is considered to be safe for users. Attackers in this era do not use old decryption techniques, they have shifted from ransom to pure extortion means they no longer need the decryption process and can easily steal users' confidential information.
Google Thread Intelligence
Google uses a technique that lets users monitor threats accurately.
This is mostly designed for organizations, saving information from more than a billion users, tackling millions of attacks like phishing, and working day and night to protect organizations.
A notification system is installed in this that monitors specific threats to companies that have high priority and understands their plan in three forms: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs).
What are the hottest topics in cybersecurity right now?
Pure extortion happens through data theft and exposure of threats in public without encryption techniques, using a designed process that damages the system on a daily basis by neglecting the security protocols. Now, hackers affect the system without alarming victims, carry out the procedure silently, and then deliver the data to others, leak private data, or harass the company to accept their demands.
What is the data breach cost reported?
Data breach costs are higher for each type of industry. According to the report by IBM, the cost of data breaches is 62% of total breaches. In 2024, the most affected sector is healthcare, ranking first in data breaches, with a cost of $9.77 million per breach. After this, in the US, data breaches in healthcare were 663, ranking the largest breach in 2024, affecting 276.3 million people. The cost of IBM in the previous year was $5.09 million, reported by the Data Breach Report, because of extortion.
What happened after Pure Extortion became widespread?
Figures changed after Pure Extortion, as there is a dangerous increase in the level of data breaches after Pure Extortion. According to the report of Verizon's 2024 Data Breach Investigations states that, 32% of data breaches are done with extortion. Pure Extortion causes a 9% increase in data breaches.
Systemic organizations working together in data kidnapping change the view of cyber threats in this era. Another report gives the figures of victims by cyber attack gangs as: CLOP 2024 has 93 victims, Akira has 315 victims, and many more.
Arctic Wolf disclosed that 22% of security breaches occur in industries.
Using Pure extortion, one incident causes a loss of over $15M+, affecting ~240.0 worldwide enterprises covering ~95-100 million people.
Sophos in 2022 released data showing 4% pure extortion cases, and in 2025, 12% of attacks were recorded.
Where do 90% of all cyber incidents begin?
ID T1190 Exploit Public Facing Application: system weaknesses like bugs in software, wrong configuration methods, and malfunctions for some time are used to destroy the network. 90% or more of cyberattacks begin with phishing emails, according to CISA.
Process of Pure Extortion
- Access at the start
- Strategies inside the system at a specific time
- Silence inside Silence
- Shocking by access
What is the first action to take when a company experiences a cyber attack?
First step — Notify the IT team; they start working by assessing the damage and taking precautionary measures to secure the company network.
Second step — Notify all company employees, relevant authorities, and customers.
Third step — Finding the cause behind the attack through a forensic investigation team.
Fourth step — Planning the action as gaps are identified, and updates are decided.
What are the key cybersecurity trends for 2026?
Deepfake Media and AI-powered content generation are considered to be a new and dangerous cybersecurity threat. They directly attack the human layer in the defence system in different ways as follows:
Voice messages are created using AI that feel so real that no one can tell. For this reason, US agencies spread the news to keep people aware of this in 2025.
Deepfakes are used in the form of voice, as a company CEO or other authority figures order in real-time on phone calls to workers.
Will AI technology fully replace human roles in cybersecurity?
AI helps in dealing with cybersecurity processes, generating effective plans and security plans that are effective in every aspect. So, AI cannot replace human roles in cybersecurity. It helps in cyber attacks by using modern techniques like machine learning and AI-powered solutions to automate attack detection, analyze information, and generate patterns to deal with attacks.
In what people will invest next for security: Solution and framework
As ransomware becomes more modern, not staying solely on one technique uses combined techniques as data kidnapping, extortion, or data extortion announced by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
As this is more effective to attack, PromptLock tested that it is using AI to generate voice messages and text.
Educate employees against modern attacks.
Alarm quickly against the attack; attackers slow down when their first message spread is handled quickly.
Backing up data regularly.
Backing up against backup can decrease the process speed of pure extortion. This is considered an important trend in cybersecurity groups for safety: keeping reliable backups, making identities hidden and difficult, practicing responses, and making parts of everything hard to access all at once.
Conclusion
Cyberattacks are evolving fast towards modern cybersecurity attacks. Pure extortion to modern attacks, such as AI-driven deepfakes and autonomous AI agents.
Autonomous AI agents are now being used to breach security. Regular backups, updates, and encryption techniques are not enough alone. With modern security trends, modern attacks can be handled easily. Because attackers exploit infrastructure, data, and trust of the company.