As the law enforcement agencies are urging ransomware victims not to make any ransom payment to hackers, as it not only encourages crime but also doesn’t guarantee a decryption key for sure in exchange for the payment.
Some security analysts say that this could give rise to fresh troubles to businesses and their owners on a respective note.
Know how….?
1.) Well, as businesses close their operations on a permanent note, their customers can drag such businesses to courts for dishonoring their prior commitments.
2.) If the victim is a law firm or a police unit that lost critical data for not bowing down to the demands of hackers, it could backfire on those facing prosecution as they is a 95% chance that they will lose the case and might face a jail term forever.
3.) Banning cryptocurrency payments to hackers could lead to other consequences like the ransomware spreading gangs could be forced to launch more lethal digital attacks that could make organizations desperate to look for other solutions like secret negotiations with hackers to get back their stolen data.
4.) Hackers can leak the stolen data on the dark web and can make money by selling it to interested prospects that then use that data to launch more such extortion related attacks.
5.) A rise in 3rd party companies like security firms will be witnessed as they will help the victims get the decryption key by making negotiations with the ransomware spreading gangs on the behalf of the victim. Already many such businesses have sprouted around Bay Area where the staff of such firms have secret dealings with hackers and cryptocurrency sellers and mint extra money from victims, apart from the usual ransom payment.
So, what’s the advice?
Just keep a copy or two of the data on a separate node or on cloud and then deploy resilience technology to recover that backed up info as quickly as possible when the time demands.
Using anti-malware software, patching processes, and deploying security protection tools for email, web and mobile makes complete sense.
