Researchers from IT company Citrix report that 33% of the companies they surveyed in the United Kingdom are building a stockpile of Bitcoins to pay the ransom in case their computers are infected by ransomware. Citrix surveyed 250 IT specialists in medium to large businesses, with a minimum of 250 employees.
(Photo credit: Christiaan Coolen - Creative Commons 2.0)
About 50% of the companies didn't make daily backups and 20% of the companies have no contingency measures in case of a ransomware attack.
Stockpiling of digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, is mainly done by companies with 501 to 1000 employees, 57% of them has a stockpile of cryptocurrencies. Companies with 250 to 500 employees are a buying a little less digital cash, 36% of them has a digital currency stockpile. The researchers report that from the companies with more than 2,000 employees 18% has bought Bitcoin or similar currencies to pay a ransom in case they are infected.
Businesses seem to be an interesting target for ransomware developers, 35% of the companies with more than 2,000 employees is willing to pay more than £50,000 ($72,000) to regain access to files that are considered important such as intellectual property or business critical data.
