“Today’s news demonstrates how far the implications of the Eurofins Scientific cyber-attack are still being felt within UK policing, as a backlog of 15,000 samples are continuing to jeopardise many police investigations. It has also highlighted one area of cybersecurity that is perhaps the most complex– should companies ever pay ransom to cybercriminals ? To avoid this issue in the first place, having offline and offsite data back-up is essential. The best mitigation to ransomware is having effective backup processes in place, which help companies to avoid an invidious situation where they are suddenly negotiating with cybercriminals.

But, if companies haven’t got a back-up and it’s too late, then they seriously need to weigh up what solution is best for them. Whilst the decision to pay a ransom to restore valuable data is entirely dependent on the victim and their unique situation, it is important to remember the following : you can never entirely trust cybercriminals to keep their end of the deal and in paying large sums to them, you are helping to fuel an illegal economy and thus, will help to make ransomware a more lucrative business in the future. To avoid a repeat attack, victims of ransomware need to ensure that a backup is an integral aspect of their solution moving forward.”