Ransom payments vary by industry – how much?

Victims of ransomware attacks in the manufacturing and production industry are making the biggest ransom payments, with the average ransom demand paid coming in at just over $2 million.   Victims of ransomware attacks in the manufacturing and production industry are making the biggest ransom payments, with the average ransom demand being just over $2 million. 

Of the victims who paid a ransom to cyber criminals to get the decryption key to retrieve encrypted files and servers – and disclosed how much they paid for it – the average ransom was $2,036,189. 

That’s more than double the average ransom payment made by those who detailed the cost, which amounted to $812,360.  

Of those who paid the ransoms – despite warnings not to – 37% of respondents ended up paying more than $100,000, while 8% paid more than $1 million for a decryption key. 

But while victims might believe meeting a ransom demand is the quickest way to recover their data, according to an analysis of incidents in the manufacturing and production sector, an average of just 59% of data was recovered after paying a ransom – that’s lower than the 61% of data recovered on average across all sectors. 

This story, thanks to ZDNet

Vertical specialization has been something of a theme lately, and seeing that the damages are also industry-specific is enlightening.    A bit of the highlight of going, specialist.   One can match their value more closely to the industry.