A recent article reporting that Bingham County paid approximately $3,500 in ransom to recover information and spent nearly $100,000 to respond to the attack highlights the need to take steps now to protect yourself against ransomware and be prepared in the unfortunate situation you too are a victim.

County Pays Ransom

EastIdahoNews.com reported that Bingham County discovered the attack on February 15, 2017, and received a demand for $28,000 delivered in bitcoin for a password to decrypt the county servers. All but a few servers were backed up, enabling the county to recover its information without paying the ransom. After determining it would be more expensive to buy new servers to replace three infected servers, Bingham County paid the hackers 3 bitcoins, or about $3,500, for the decryption key. The county is still recovering after spending about $100,000 to respond to the attack and operations may not return to normal until 2018