Paying Guarantees Nothing

When a ransomed organization pays for decryption, there is no actual guarantee its problem will immediately go away, and that’s if the attacker gives it the decryption key and that it will work, Kessem said.

“Even when all this goes well, the recovery process can be very lengthy, data can be corrupted and the recovery will have to come from backups either way,” she said. “Of course, there are cases where businesses are able to recover faster, case-specific, and some pay to prevent exposure of the data. But again, paying the ransom just funds a future attack, meaning that business will be repeating a cyber crisis all over again.”