That’s because when an organization pays a ransom, it solves an immediate problem, but also announces a willingness to pay potentially large sums of money to resolve a crisis. According to a study by Cybereason, 80% of ransomware victims who paid the ransom were hit by a subsequent ransomware attack, with 68% of compromised organizations saying that the second attack came less than a month later and that the hackers demanded a higher ransom. There’s also a technical hazard in paying a hacker's ransom. Caesars was still forced to admit to regulators that it paid a ransom to the hackers who had stolen a copy of Caesars' loyalty program database, which includes driver licenses and Social Security numbers for a “significant number of members.”Įven then, Caesars admitted that it “cannot guarantee” that the hackers kept their end of the bargain and actually deleted the data they stole.

After all, any data stolen by cybercriminals is compromised whether a ransom is paid or not, and you can't trust a criminal's word that they actually deleted your data.Ĭaesars' breach stayed largely out of the headlines, but the company's liability remained largely the same.

But there's no guarantee that paying up will ensure the safe return of stolen data - or that all copies have been erased. Paying the attackers’ ransom - particularly for large organizations with plenty of cash - often seems like the easiest and cheapest option to get their networks operational and any stolen data recovered. According to a survey of hundreds of security leaders published by Splunk, some 83% of organizations admitted to paying hackers following a ransomware attack, and more than half paid at least $100,000, either through cyber insurance or a third-party. That’s largely because the hotel and casino giant paid off the hackers to prevent the disclosure of stolen data in the hope of making the incident go away.Ĭaesars is by no means alone. While the MGM cyberattack dominated headlines for weeks, an earlier cyberattack on Caesars Entertainment barely made it into the news.

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