The dilemma for ransomware victims is weighing the cost of paying the ransom and the financial loss that comes along with it versus managing the lost productivity, extra IT costs, legal fees, network damage and potential reputational loss that not paying the ransom could create. In recent years, ransomware criminals have added extortion to their demands, threatening to expose sensitive or proprietary data if a victim doesn’t pay the ransom, and publicly naming the company as having been hacked. Ransomware can have a disastrous effect on a business and leave it without the data and systems needed to maintain its operations. It is crucial that every organization stay vigilant with their security tools, but more importantly, train employees on how to avoid cybersecurity traps and be secure online. Not surprisingly, 80% of this list is caused by human behavior. What are the leading causes of ransomware infections? Phishing attacks are the most common, followed by lack of employee cybersecurity training lack of, or outdated, security tools like antivirus or firewalls malicious websites or malvertising and end user error (Datto, 2018). Other widely publicized ransomware attacks have used Ryuk, which mainly targets large businesses and government agencies, Maze, which threatens to publish ransomed data on the internet if the victim fails to pay, and NetWalker, which targets remote workers, as well as government agencies and healthcare organizations. It targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system and caused damages estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the most well-known ransomware attacks happened in May 2017, when Wannacry affected more than 300,000 computers across 150 countries. Cybercriminals demand a ransom in exchange for decrypting the files. Ransomware is malware that encrypts files on a device, making them inaccessible and rendering the systems that use them inoperable. It’s a big question for businesses hit by a ransomware attack: should we pay the ransom or not?

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