A Florida city paid 600,000 dollars in ransom
Riviera Beach voted to pay attackers after an employee opened an email. Paying is a decision best made before an attack.
Last week the city council of Riviera Beach, Florida, voted to pay about 600,000 dollars in bitcoin to ransomware attackers. The attack started weeks earlier when an employee opened an infected email. Insurance will cover much of the cost.
Whether to pay is a hard decision. It’s much harder at 2 am with everything down and no plan.
Decide now, with leadership and legal advice:
- Under what conditions would we consider paying, if ever?
- Who decides, and who do we call first: insurer, lawyers, incident responders?
- Could we restore without paying? Test your backups to know the real answer.
And the cheapest part: block macros and dangerous attachments, and make it easy for staff to report a strange email. One opened attachment shouldn’t be able to stop a city.