Norwalk, Conn., Sept. 7, 2016 — Surveying more than 1,000 IT service providers in the United States and internationally, representing hundreds of thousands of small businesses, a new study by Datto, the leading provider of total data protection solutions for businesses around the world, revealed today that 91 percent of respondents reported having their clients victimized by ransomware in the past twelve months. A shocking 40 percent of survey respondents reported more than half-a-dozen separate attacks during the same time frame. In the United States, these attacks cause $75 billion in damages to small and medium-sized businesses, with downtime from ransomware often costing businesses more than $8,500 per hour.