REPORT FINDS MORE THAN HALF OF RANSOMWARE VICTIMS WOULD PAY THE RANSOM

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Rebecca Gill

Telstra’s 2019 Security Report has found that majority of the respondents who have been victims of ransomware attacks have paid the attackers to unlock files. Many of these respondents successfully retrieved their data after paying the ransom.

Of the 320 Australian respondents, 51 per cent said that they had paid ransomware attackers to regain access to encrypted files. Further, the Report found that 77 per cent of Australian businesses that had paid a ransom were able to retrieve their data after making the payment. Whilst this was the lowest rate of data retrieval post-payment out of the 13 countries in the survey, 79 per cent of the Australian respondents still said that they would pay the ransom again if they had no back-up files available.

The Report also found that the number of ransomware attacks on Australian businesses was relatively higher than other developed countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and France. Thirty two per cent of the Australian respondents indicated that their business had been interrupted ‘on a weekly or monthly basis’ from ransomware attacks.

It explains why ransomware is such a lucrative business for hackers, though we’d recommend having clear and tested backup and recovery processes, and strong cybersecurity measures, as your best fall-back in the event of a ransomware attack – and to save your cryptocurrency for the next market rise!

A copy of the full Report can be accessed here.