Having a clear, comprehensive ransomware response plan is essential for any business. This should include details on what everyone's responsibilities are, how to make and recover backups and what reporting steps are required.
Law enforcement agencies in the US and UK advise against paying ransomware demands, as this provides further encouragement to cybercriminal gangs. Businesses that do are more likely to come under further attack than those that refuse.
Costs for ransomware include direct lost business, ransomware payments, recovery expenses, investigation and future mitigation, fines from regulators and class action lawsuits. In 2023, this added up to an average total of $5.13 million, compared with $4.45 million for data breaches as a whole.
Traditional antivirus software may have difficulty detecting the latest advanced attacks. Monitoring tools that analyze behavior within the network are therefore essential in spotting ransomware attacks.
