A Firm That Pays The Ransom For You

“We are pragmatists, and the ‘never pay’ mantra is simply not attuned to the reality of the choices businesses have when they are hit,” says the company’s CEO and co-founder. Sometimes they can negotiate the ransom down, and at all times – they say their success rate is 100 percent – they handle the recovery operation once the ransom is paid, a process which isn’t as simple as many would assume. A ransom incident, the CEO says, is not the time to learn “the vagaries of the cryptocurrency capital markets,” and once the deal is made, the decryptor tools are notoriously “flukey.” Sometimes an unlikely dynamic develops, with the company working with the attacker to figure it out. These people are running a business, the CEO explains, and they don’t want word to get out that you don’t get what you pay for. He does not, however, advise paying in every case, and whether or not he does depends on a number of factors, including the nature of the encrypted information and extent of the backups. The company provides its services free to small businesses – or more precisely in exchange for the information it gleans from the episode, information which it uses to improve its own data set and thereby hone its business with clients from security firms and law enforcement.