This is a true story, and it can happen to anyone. A friend was employed at a company that does over $500 million in sales and its computers were hacked and wiped out and ransom was demanded. The company decided to not pay it. Here is what happened.
All of the company’s records were on the system and there wasn’t a current enough backup to allow the orders in process to be understood and shipped. The inventory records couldn’t be accessed, and customer files weren’t current. The CEO made a decision to get the orders updated and shipped for the largest 20% of the customers which comprised 80% of the sales volume.
Well, some sales people that primarily handled the 80% of the customers, had to scramble to find another employer so their customers could be serviced properly. Comment: 20% of $500 million is a lot of business. Also some of these sales people were with the company over 30 years and their job security was destroyed in a moment, through no fault of theirs.
Even though efforts were made for the 20% largest customers, they weren’t handled as well as they should have and there was some fall out from them. In an instant, the company’s value was destroyed.
It is likely decisions were made at some point to not spend the full amount of money to provide the complete security they should have had and that would have avoided this hacking. It is also probable that even if they did, they would have been hacked anyway; but then the backup would have kicked in.
A lesson here is that it could happen to you and you must be prepared and you can by assuming you will be hacked and that you have all the protective measures in place.
P.S. No one knows what would have occurred if the ransom was paid.
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