#IT WONT STOP SOFTWARE#

In some cases, businesses can claim back this cost from cyber-insurance policies. Of course, when the network is down and they can't operate, or if ransomware has compromised industrial control systems and manufacturing is impossible, businesses aren't thinking about the long-term consequences of paying the ransom, they just want the issue resolved as quickly as possible. Not only does paying ransoms show criminals that ransomware works, encouraging further attacks, but the nature of the criminal ecosystem also means that payments are used to fund other crimes. Fundamentally, we are funding crime and that's a bad thing,' says Jen Ellis, vice president of community and public affairs at Rapid7 and a co-chair of the Institute for Security and Technology's (IST) Ransomware Task ForceВ (RTF). 'From an ideological point of view, most people agree that you want to ban ransom payments. The potential positive and negative consequences of banning ransom payments were recently discussed by a group of experts during a panel on disrupting the ransomware ecosystem, which was hosted by Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), a defence and security think tank.

While governments discourage organisations from paying ransoms to cyber criminals, the practice isn't illegal вЂ“ but there have been calls for legislation to be drawn up to ban paying ransoms. However, there are concerns that this creates a self-perpetuating cycle. These are just a handful of examples, but cyber criminals are regularly demanding millions of dollars from victims вЂ“ and in many cases, they're paying up because they don't feel as if they've got any other option when it comes to restoring their network. The attackers demanded a ransom payment of $70 million in exchange for a universal decryption toolВ to supposedly resolve a problem affecting customers around the world вЂ“ including a chain of supermarkets in Sweden that temporarily closed due to the cyberattack.

SEE: Have we reached peak ransomware? How the internet's biggest security problem has grown and what happens next

#IT WONT STOP SOFTWARE#

REvil ransomware was also used in a massive ransomware attack, which saw management software company KaseyaВ hacked, affecting 1,500 companies around the world.

Kaseya urges customers to immediately shut down VSA server.

US launches investigation as gang demands giant $70 million payment.

1,500 companies affected, Kaseya confirms.

Kaseya ransomware supply chain attack: What you need to know.

It wont stop