Ransom Demands Decrease and More Companies Refuse to Pay

The number of ransomware victims opting to pay the ransom has fallen to a record low, according to the most recent data from Coveware, a ransomware remediation company in Westport, CT. At the beginning of 2019, 85% of ransomware victims paid a ransom. However, that figure fell to 46% in the middle of 2021 and 29% in the last quarter of 2023.

Coveware attributed the decline to “continued resiliency growth in enterprise environments; companies impacted by ransomware are increasingly able to recover from incidents partially or fully without the use of a decryption tool.”

Also, the company noted data-driven reluctance to pay for intangible promises from cybercriminals, such as the promise not to publish/misuse stolen data and the promise to exempt the company from future attacks or harassment. (The Coveware report is available online at: https://bit.ly/42lAHxe.)

“The industry continues to get smarter on what can and cannot be reasonably obtained with a ransom payment. This has led to better guidance to victims and fewer payments for intangible assurances,” the Coveware report authors noted. “The trend aligned with a relative decline in the size of victims impacted and a reappearance of small-game actors groups who reclaimed some market share after previously dropping in frequency during Q3.”