Ransomware and Data Protection in the Hydrocarbons Sector:
How to protect critical energy infrastructure

The hydrocarbon sector is no longer a secondary target for cybercrime. Today, it is one of the most profitable targets on the planet. The reason is simple: an oil company not only safeguards financial and operational information, it safeguards national continuity. When a ransomware group manages to infiltrate its systems, it is not negotiating with just another company; it is negotiating with the energy supply of an entire country.

That is precisely the lesson learned from the recent cybersecurity incident that rocked one of Colombia’s leading oil companies in July 2026. An external actor gained access to its cloud infrastructure, exfiltrated information from thousands of user accounts belonging to more than a dozen companies within the business group, and attempted to deploy mass encryption, which, fortunately, was neutralized by internal controls. The attack did not stop there: those responsible published some of the stolen information and activated extortion threats, forcing the company to coordinate with judicial and cybersecurity authorities to contain the leak.

The message for any technology, risk, business continuity, or information security leader in the energy sector is stark: modern ransomware no longer relies on encrypting files to cause damage. Stealing data and threatening to publish it is, for many criminal groups, just as effective as locking down an entire system. Data breach extortion has grown steadily while traditional encryption attacks have remained relatively stable—a shift in strategy that demands a corresponding change in how organizations protect their information.

A pattern, not an isolated incident

The hydrocarbon industry has a recent memory of these types of episodes, and they all share the same denominator: the gap between corporate systems and critical operations is thinner than most boards of directors assume.
In 2021, Colonial Pipeline—the largest oil pipeline operator in the United States—was forced to completely halt fuel shipments to the East Coast following an attack by the Darkside group, which, in addition to encrypting systems, stole nearly 100 gigabytes of data before the shutdown. The result was fuel shortages in several states and a national emergency declaration.

Two years earlier, in 2019, the Mexican oil company Pemex faced a DoppelPaymer ransomware attack that compromised part of its technological infrastructure. In 2020, Brazilian energy companies such as Electrobras and Copel were also victims of ransomware attacks, the latter also linked to the DarkSide group.

The pattern is clear: attackers have identified the energy sector as a high-impact, low-margin pressure point. Each new incident refines their methodology: prior network reconnaissance, identification of vulnerabilities and remote access, silent exfiltration, and only then, the threat.

The question is no longer “if”, but “when” and “how prepared”

For organizations in the hydrocarbon, banking, government, and aviation sectors, protecting data from ransomware requires a security architecture that goes beyond the perimeter: verifiable digital identity, segmentation of privileged access, encryption of data at rest and in transit, continuous monitoring of anomalous behavior, and incident response protocols that are planned, not improvised when it is too late.

The companies leading the conversation on digital resilience today share a common trait: they treat cybersecurity as strategic infrastructure, on par with production, transportation, or refining. The trust of the market, regulators, and users is no longer built solely on operational results; it is built by demonstrating that the data of millions of people and dozens of affiliated companies is effectively protected.

Ransomware will continue to evolve. The question every organization in the energy sector must answer today—before an external actor answers it for them—is whether their data protection strategy is designed for the ransomware of 2021, or for the ransomware that’s already knocking at the door in 2026.