Suffering from a ransomware attack is one of the worst things that anyone can end up going through. People that suffer from these attacks usually have two really unsatisfactory options. One would involve losing all of their data, and the alternative would be paying a hefty amount to the person that initiated the ransomware attack against them. The most common victims of such attacks are companies whose data is quite valuable although attacks against individuals are pretty common as well, but as of late a rather unique and interesting trend has been seen to develop over time.
This trend that has been developing is that ransomware payments have actually been on the decline, going from over $233,000 to just over $154,000 in just a three month period of time, i.e. according to Coveware. The reason why this is happening has to do with ransomware victims no longer giving in to the demands of their malicious attackers, and are opting to lose their data rather than to pay up. This has led many to speculate that ransomware attacks might just end up decreasing since hackers are going to realize that their tactics are not working as much as they used to. If they are not earning as much money from it then they might not do it at all because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up wasting their time.
That said, just because a percentage of victims have stopped paying doesn’t change the fact that a lot of victims do pay. $154K is a lot of money, and ransomware attackers might just keep at it and take the lower earnings as a cost of doing business which means that ransomware attacks might continue to be extremely costly to a lot of people for a very long time to come.
Read next: Here's how much Google paid to hackers and researchers for their security services in 2020
This trend that has been developing is that ransomware payments have actually been on the decline, going from over $233,000 to just over $154,000 in just a three month period of time, i.e. according to Coveware. The reason why this is happening has to do with ransomware victims no longer giving in to the demands of their malicious attackers, and are opting to lose their data rather than to pay up. This has led many to speculate that ransomware attacks might just end up decreasing since hackers are going to realize that their tactics are not working as much as they used to. If they are not earning as much money from it then they might not do it at all because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up wasting their time.
That said, just because a percentage of victims have stopped paying doesn’t change the fact that a lot of victims do pay. $154K is a lot of money, and ransomware attackers might just keep at it and take the lower earnings as a cost of doing business which means that ransomware attacks might continue to be extremely costly to a lot of people for a very long time to come.
Read next: Here's how much Google paid to hackers and researchers for their security services in 2020
