Earlier this year, our security team had to help a small, two-person law firm. They thought they were too small to be hacked. Not only did the hackers get into their network, they destroyed all their backups and deployed ransomware.
The ransom was $44,000. Why would they ask this firm for $44,000 when they are asking other companies for $250,000? Because this happened to be the amount the firm had in their bank account.
When hackers get into your computer, they aren’t going to immediately deploy ransomware. They are going to wait. They are going to get access to all your data. If they can get access to your QuickBooks file or your bank account, they are going to use that information to help them figure out how much you can pay.
If the ransom had been $250,000, the firm would have had to go out of business. But with it being the amount they had in the bank…the decision to pay the ransom was much harder to deal with.
What can you do about this? Make sure you have some type of advanced security solution in place to be able to see if an attacker is already in your environment looking at everything you and your team are doing on your computers.
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