My Data Has Been Stolen. Should I Pay a Ransom to Get it Back?

It’s a scenario that has become all-too-common in recent years: 

Your business is attacked by malicious hackers, and you wake up one morning to discover that critical data has been stolen from your business.  

You’re contacted by the hackers and told that the only way to get your data back is to pay them a ransom.  

How should you respond? Should you pay the ransom? 

There are two ways to answer this question. One of them is much more satisfying (and much less costly) than the other. And the good news is that you have the power to choose which route you’ll have to take should you ever face this scenario.  

Option Number One: If you’ve got proper IT infrastructure in place, you absolutely don’t have to pay the ransom and you can tell the hackers to go take a hike.  

You can do this because you’ve got backup systems in place that allow you to recover the data. And because you have cybersecurity systems in place that allow you to quickly eliminate the threat and restore operations with minimal disruption.  

(Also, keep in mind that if you’ve got proper defenses in place, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to face this type of situation in the first place.)  
 
Option Number Two: Unfortunately, if you haven’t put cybersecurity protections in place and if you don’t have secure backups that you can rapidly restore… you might be left with no choice but to pay the ransom. Especially if it’s sensitive data that you can’t afford to lose.  

This is a really bad situation to be in – because even if you do pay the ransom, there’s no guarantee that the bad guys are going to give you the data back. And there’s no guarantee that they won’t do it again the next day. This can quickly turn into a nightmare that spirals out of control.  

I sincerely hope that, should you find yourself in this situation, you’ll be able to choose option number one and refuse to give the bad guys even a single penny.  

But as you can probably see, if you wait until your business is attacked to begin thinking about this type of scenario, it will be too late and you may be forced to pay the ransom.  

The right time to prepare is before something goes wrong.  

Take a few minutes right now and think about this. Have a conversation with your IT provider. 

Have you implemented proper cyber hygiene to reduce the chances of a cyberattack?  

Are you training your team, on an ongoing basis, to recognize and avoid potential mistakes that could lead to a data breach? 

Do you have proper backups in place that will allow you to quickly recover data and restore operations in the event of a successful attack? 

If you’re not sure or if you need some help building proper cybersecurity defenses for your business, I would be glad to speak with you.  

Please reach out to us via email at info@weareproactive.com or 704-464-3075 extension 3.        

Dedicated to IT security and productivity,   

– Steve