Greg's Corner

Should companies keep Bitcoin on hand in case of ransomware?

In wake of the recent WannaCry ransomware attack, cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been in the news a lot lately. In a nutshell, Bitcoin is a digital form of currency that is almost completely anonymous. While it can be used for legal and legitimate transactions, Bitcoin does have somewhat of a shady reputation since it’s not only used as the method of payment to unlock ransomware, but it’s also been used as the de facto form of payment in dark web black markets like Silk Road.

The people behind the WannaCry attack have so far claimed close to $100,000 in ransom. That’s not a lot when you consider that they were asking between $300 and $600 for each machine that had become infected that was said to number in the hundreds of thousands. According to NBC News, a number of companies have been stockpiling Bitcoin in order to quickly resolve any ransomware attacks they may become the victims of. Is this good business? Well, yes and no. As mentioned before, there is never any guarantee that the encrypted files will ever be released if the ransom is paid. However, it could be more financially viable for some companies to pay the ransom rather than deploying a battalion of IT workers to hopefully fix the problem. Either way to finding a solution a is a huge gamble and neither of them have any kind of beneficial payoff.

Paying off ransomware may get your files back, but in the long run it encourages more groups to launch more attacks.