According to data provided by Citrix and Censuswide, who polled 250 UK IT and security managers, one in three UK businesses is now creating a backup account for holding cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin in the event of a cyber-attack.
Companies are willing to pay as much as GBP 50,000 (USD 72,700) to unlock their computers and retrieve their IP (intellectual property) in case ransomware somehow makes it into their network.
The exact percentages are 36% of the companies with 250-500 employees, 57% of the businesses with 501-1,000 employees, and 18% of the companies with over 2,000 employees.
The reason behind companies building up cryptocurrency reserves is that ransomware has infected all sorts of businesses and government agencies, from hospitals to courtrooms, and from high schools to police stations.
The speed at which these companies are protecting themselves is not good enough, though, as the study also reveals. Citrix says that 48% of the polled companies dont run daily backup operations, putting themselves in danger of losing crucial data.
Besides ransomware infections, Bitcoin is also the currency of choice for other types of cyber-criminal activity, such as ransoming data breaches, DDoS-for-Bitcoin extortions, and more.
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