For those who don’t know what ransomware is, you should get to know, fast.
Ransomware is becoming one of the largest risks facing businesses. Causing irreparable reputational damage, creating huge financial losses and breaking GDPR guidelines – it is a triple threat.
Without adequate security measures, it is no longer a case of ‘if’ you will be attacked, but ‘when’. However, when the inevitable strikes… you may find yourself asking the controversial question ‘to pay, or not to pay?’
Some experts believe that ransomware should never be paid while others think that it’s not that clear cut and depends on the situation. In this article we highlight what you should consider when ransomware strikes. This decision can only happen at the board level, by the directors of the company, as it is as much a commercial decision as it is an ethical decision and often it is the survival of the company which is at stake.
When presented with an option to pay a ransom, there is no guarantee that the cyber-criminal will come through and return the data. Even if you pay, there is about a 50/50 chance the hackers deliver the decryption tool but on average, only 65% of data is recovered and only 8% of organisations recover all data, which means that paying the ransomware is not a reliable option.
At the end of the day, hackers are criminals and so they shouldn’t be trusted. Plus, what is to say that once the criminal knows a business is a weak target, they won’t do it again? According to a Cybereason, 80% of companies who paid the ransomware, were hit by another ransomware attack.
It is also important to remember that even if the hackers provide the decryption key, encrypted files are often unrecoverable, and a recovery attempt can take several weeks.
Moreover, the hackers may not delete the data they hold and still publish it at a later date.
By paying the ransom, you are essentially funding criminal activity and fuelling cyber-crime. Governments and law enforcement agencies across the world advise not to pay ransomware to deprive the attackers of their economic incentive.
Once a ransom payment has been made and there is a potential target on the back of your business, the chance of securing affordable cyber insurance will quickly diminish. Cyber insurance is rapidly becoming one of the most sought-after forms of insurance, and for obvious reasons. So, not having this in the future will likely put your company at a large disadvantage in a competitive market.
For the above reasons and more, many organisations have now introduced measures to ban the payment of ransoms, with 56% of businesses reporting policies to prevent ransom payments according to the UK Government’s 2022 Cyber Security breach Survey.
It is important to remember that ransomware attacks are designed to look intimidating. The criminal is an expert in deception and their sole aim is to panic you to pay. It is crucial that in case of attack, you have established a procedure to work with an cyber incident response team to investigate the incident and establish whether the data can be restored without paying the ransom. If this fails, you should follow your incident recovery process and restore operations from your backups.
According to Statista, 57% of companies restore their data using backups following a ransomware attack. The important difference is that a company is in control of its own backups which means that it can put the right measures in place and test them to reliable restore its data in case of an attack. Your backups are your best insurance against ransomware and can help you restore your business quickly, even if you don’t get your encrypted data back. At Riela, we recommend disconnecting your device from the network as soon as an attack strikes and not touching anything further until an expert has examined the environment.
In some cases when threatened with a data leak, payment of the ransom can prevent what could otherwise be a catastrophic data leak and a breach of client confidentiality, governance or privacy laws. As such, the board of a company may decide that payment of a ransom may be necessary to protect their business from devastating consequences.
If your company is a key part of a country’s critical infrastructure, such as Colonial Pipeline, the consequences of not paying the ransomware could endanger lives or cripple healthcare, energy or food supplies.
If the hackers managed to steal or encrypt crucial proprietary intellectual property (IP), a company may be required to recover the data and avoid a data leak at all costs to prevent its competitors from gaining access to business sensitive information.
Sometimes, the decision of whether to pay or not to pay comes down to the very survival of the business. If the business faces a situation where it could not restore operations without the encrypted data, then the board would need to assess very carefully whether they should pay the ransom. As part of the consideration, they should keep in mind that only about half of ransomware payments lead to the recovery of data, and often they can’t recover everything either.
At the end of the day, being hit with a ransomware attack is a double-edged sword, it is a balancing act between legal and regulatory considerations and the survival of a business. This year our Director Christian Goelz was part of a panel on Ransomware at CYBERISLE: Ransomware – Does paying pay off? Click here to read more about the event.
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Kurt Schrauwen is a Director of the Riela Group of companies which includes Riela Yachts, Riela Cyber and Riela Tech.
Kurt brings more than 20 years of leadership experience having been an early part of the global success of Microgaming in becoming a market leader. Kurt was responsible for the commercial, contractual, and technical sales for Microgaming and with this experience will complement the company’s growth strategy.
Kurt is passionate about business optimisation and prides himself in having an intrapreneurial outlook to maximise staff potential, reduce inefficiencies as well as identifying and maturing revenue growth opportunities.
Paul Cocker joined the Riela Group in late 2021, after spending just under 20 years with his previous employer.
Paul is responsible for the Riela Tech service levels, working on both the dispatch function and SLA management. Paul carries out a variety of duties across the Network Operations Centre and works closely across the wider team to deliver professionally tailored solutions for our Riela Tech clients.
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Murat Guner joined the Riela Group in the Summer of 2021 as an Infrastructure Engineer.
Murat began his career in Turkey as a computer teacher for primary and secondary schools before migrating his skills into IT infrastructure. After honing his IT experiences throughout a colourful career path, Murat gained numerous qualifications which he is now excited to apply to the management of our Riela Tech infrastructure.
Andy is a qualified Network Engineer with in-depth knowledge of architecting, implementing and supporting networking solutions in the SMB, Enterprise and Service Provider environments.
He has over 20 years of experience working across multiple vendor operating systems, including Cisco, Juniper, Linux and Microsoft, and has also been responsible for implementing a variety of large scale network services deployments, taking projects from design to rollout and support.
Andy also has experience of deploying and migrating a range of virtualisation technologies including VMWare, Hyper-V and KVM based systems.
Email: andy@riela-cyber.com
Marc is our Group’s Infrastructure and Managed Services lead with over 18 years’ experience in delivering infrastructure projects across multiple industry verticals and international jurisdictions. From projects in Aerospace and Engineering through to Banking and Insurance, from Europe, China, Africa and Australia.
This experience is matched with a varied list of certifications from leading industry vendors such as Hp, Cisco, Microsoft, Ruckus, CompTIA and more. As a qualified technical trainer Marc is comfortably able to take complicated technical concepts and deliver them in simplistic terms to key decision makers and end users alike.
Most of Marc’s experience has been gained working for managed service providers, both large and niche and as such is able to take real world experience and blend it with industry standards to help align our service delivery with our clients values and processes.
As a Marketing Executive, Alex is responsible for all marketing duties spanning the Riela Group.
Alex joined the Riela Group in August 2020, shortly after graduating with a Psychology degree from Nottingham Trent University.
With past work experience in content marketing, event management and web design, Alex is able to apply her creative and analytical skills into the Riela strategy.
As the Head of Group Sales at the Riela family of companies, Matthew leads the company’s sales strategy, execution, and growth.
Matthew has a successful record building trusted client relationship and delivering upon set expectations. An accomplished sales leader, he delivers a sales process that provides clients with the information and support they need to make the right decisions for their organisations and their constituents.
Matthew has significant experience within the maritime industry having previously worked across various sectors including insurance, security, satellite communications and managed IT. Matthew’s most recent experience encompasses almost 5 years spent with the leading satellite communications and managed IT provider in the maritime industry, focusing on their superyacht clientele.
Christian is involved across the Riela family of companies with particular attention to the technology businesses, Cyber and Tech.
Christian gained a postgraduate Master in Finance degree at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland and completed his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Before joining us, Christian worked for six years at Argosy Capital, an Isle of Man-based private equity and venture capital business focusing on early-stage growth businesses. At Argosy, he focused on managing investment companies, research and financial analysis and served as a director on several boards.
Robert Tobin is the Managing Director of the Riela Group of Companies and is responsible in overseeing our business operations, our people and driving excellence in all we do.
Rob brings over 25 years’ of successful leadership and entrepreneurial experience across a range of industries including Family Office, corporate services, construction engineering, Superyachts, cyber security and information technology development to our Group, and to our customers.
In the past 15 years Rob has gained a prominent reputation within the Superyacht industry for his passion, integrity, innovation and achievements to date.
“Being part of an awesome, capable and forward thinking team that have a shared passion for Superyachts, people and the environment is the highlight of my career and puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step everyday”.
Peter is an experienced technology consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the IT and cyber security industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), IT Strategy, Start-ups, Regulations, and Online Gaming. Strong consulting professional with a DPhil focused in Natural Sciences from ChristChurch, Oxford.
Tim Bliss, Managing Director of Riela Tech since the company foundation in 2015 and Director of Riela Cyber, brings over 20 years’ of successful leadership experience across a range of industries including finance and banking, software development, and manufacturing, as well as cyber security and information technology. Prior to forming the company he led the technology for Manx Financial Group PLC, where he was instrumental in business systems transformation.
“It is our hugely capable team of experts that drives our business – it is fantastic and rewarding to be able to use technology, intelligence, and great customer service to help make our clients’ business and staff progressively more efficient resilient and secure”
