Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again
by kelnos on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:31PM
(#27553990)
I think that mantra does work here.
I would be totally fine with legislation making it illegal to pay in the case of ransomware attacks. Some companies might be completely destroyed by an attack that they can't pay off, but that is for the greater good of society: if criminals know companies have a low probability of paying since they're legally barred from doing so, they're less likely to target them.
Re:80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again
by thepete2 on Friday June 18, 2021 @03:14PM
(#27553807)
It has from a certain angle: For society/the internet as a whole it might be better for no one to pay the ransom at the cost of some of them perishing. The ransomware attacks would become unprofitable and would eventually stop. But to assume any organization wouldn't pay the ransom if its survival depends on it is obviously unrealistic.
This has nothing to do with that idea.
The reason the orgs paid the random once was because they had a severe lack of backup and other data safety protocols in combination with a vector to be infected (from all what we know, the latter is common and difficult to avoid): paying the ransom is likely their only choice to maintain the business.
It is not surprising at all that these orgs can and will be infected again, and will continue to show a lack in the security and data safety departments, and so they will continue to pay ransoms.
It's sort of an inverse survivorship bias: if you get infected once because you're susceptible, you're likely to get infected again unless you fix your susceptibility.