The SolarWinds cyberattack on the federal government and American businesses last year incentivized hackers worldwide to go bigger and bolder in multiple major ransomware attacks in the past few months.

Despite cyberattacks being a common problem in the past decade, the SolarWinds hack and the vulnerabilities created by the pandemic have given hackers added confidence to orchestrate devastating attacks on federal government computer systems, the Colonial Pipeline, and the meat producer JBS, according to Brian Horton, CEO of Breadcrumb Cybersecurity, a cybersecurity firm in California.