When faced with a ransomware attack, a person or company or government agency finds its digital data encrypted by an unknown person, and then gets a demand for a ransom.
As that type of digital hijacking has become more common in recent years, there have been two major ways people have chosen to respond: pay the ransom, which can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or hire computer security consultants to recover the data independently.
Those approaches are missing another option that we have identified in our cybersecurity policy studies. Police have a long history of successful crisis and hostage negotiation – experience that offers lessons that could be useful for people and organizations facing ransomware attacks.
Understanding the problem
In the first nine months of 2019, more than 600 U.S. government agencies – including entire municipal governments – suffered ransomware attacks. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards was forced to declare a state of emergency following ransomware attacks on state government servers that caused widespread network outages at many state agencies, including the Office of Motor Vehicles and the departments of Public Health and Public Safety.
Many of those victims chose to pay the ransom demanded by whoever hijacked their data. Lake C ..
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