You must have heard that a lot of companies get hacked from time and time and it is also seen that they have two options which are either to surrender and pay the hackers their ransom amount if they are asking for the same. Or the other option is to inform law enforcement agencies about the hack and then try to recover data from the infected systems as long as the hackers don’t have the ability to nuke the systems remotely. Talking about what usually happens, companies are willing to pay the ransom amount most of the times.
And this is because they think that data recovery, as well as investigations, will take a long time and it is a waste of money. Also, they feel that it is easier and more efficient to pay the ransom rather than trying to recover data. But we have a new report which will go against the popular belief that paying the ransom is cheaper. Because this report reveals that paying the ransom is actually costlier than recovering data. As per research, “average global cost of addressing the impact of a ransomware attack stands at $730,000, which is exclusive of business downtime, lost orders, operational costs, and other recovery expenses”.
But the interesting part is the next part of this research where it is revealed that “if organizations choose to pay the ransom instead, it would cost them $1.4 million”. This clearly shows that the costs double up when choosing to pay the ransom. Do note that this is an average and some companies might end up paying more and some less. But the point here is that the cost of recovery for smaller companies will also be lesser so it averages out quite perfectly. It also has to do pressure from customers which is why companies tend to pay the ransom rather than having downtime.
