trusts and almost one in ten gp practices. ransomware is a type of malware that blocks a victim s access to their data until a ransom is paid. this latest attack is somewhat different in that the data has already been extracted, but the principle money for illicitly hacked data is obviously similar. how common is this kind of cybercrime? increasingly so is the depressing answer. here s one estimate for the annual number of ransomware attacks worldwide almost half a billion last year less than 2021, but still well up on years before that. how often do ransoms get paid? a recent survey by the cybersecurity firm fortinet found that of the organisations that experienced a ransomware incident, 71% said they paid at least a portion of the demanded ransom. in 2021, the world s largest meat processing company, america sjbs foods, paid the equivalent of $11 million in ransom.
right? those organizations, those companies that are going to be the targets that russia will target. and, real quickly, you talked about how the ukrainian government has suffered a series of cyber attacks in recent weeks. do those attacks tell you anything about what could come from the u.s.? can you glean anything from what you re seeing in that area? we saw a sort of superficial another sort of superficial destruction active attack that was actually pretending to be a ransomware incident. that s exactly what we were telling our customers to expect weeks before. this is something they ve done again and again. and the lesson that i gathered from that is we do know a lot about how they operate, and we can somewhat predict their behavior. that means we can take a lot of actions now to defend against them. all right. john hultquist, we appreciate your insight and perspective this morning. thanks for having me.