Poll: When Will You Pay Up for Ransomware?

When is it okay to pay the ransom demanded by malware? Take our poll to add your voice to the community wisdom.

Individuals and organizations that deploy ransomware and ask for money in exchange for decrypting your files are bad. Very bad. No one disputes that. But would you do business with them? What if it were your files at the other end of an encryption key? Thats the gist of the question were asking in our current Security Now poll -- a quick poll wed love for you to take.
Take our quick poll on the right hand column of the site or
right here
.
Its easy to make sweeping statements like, We dont negotiate with thieves and terrorists. Its much easier, of course, if youre not the one whose data has been encrypted, or if you have a rock-solid backup and recovery plan. In either case, its an option that you can easily choose as one of the responses to our
poll
.
Now, you can also take the pragmatic approach and treat ransom as either a cost of doing business or just the price to be paid when bad things happen to good companies. The question then becomes how quickly and under which circumstances youre going to pay the criminals.
What do you think? Do principles win over pragmatism? When push comes to shove do you think that paying up to be up and running is the right answer? We want to know.
And wed like to hear the reasoning behind your answer. Have you been part of an organization hit by ransomware? Do you have personal experience with this particular plague? The comments section for the
poll
is open, and it would be great to see some details (identifying information redacted, if appropriate) on the events that led to your poll response.
The
poll
will be live for another week or so -- its going to be fascinating to see what the final totals are for the various answers. In the meantime, lets start the discussion: How ready are
you
to pay up?
Related posts:
WannaCry Was Just the Beginning
Petya Ransomware Takes the World by Storm
WannaCry Hits Honda
— Curtis Franklin is the editor of
SecurityNow.com
. Follow him on Twitter
@kg4gwa
.

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