Should Organizations Pay a Ransom Demand?

**Executive summary:** This article examines the debate over paying ransomware demands, explaining ransomware and double-extortion risks, arguing that payment often fails to guarantee recovery and can incentivize further attacks, and recommending preventative and resilience measures—endpoint protection, timely patching, offsite/backed-up data, access controls/Zero Trust, employee awareness, and regular procedure and resilience testing—to reduce impact and avoid ransom payments.