What Do You Get When You Hire a Ransomware Negotiator?
March 14, 2025 – Published on BankInfoSecurity
By all accounts, the ransomware business is booming.
While ransom payments dipped last year, researchers said a Fortune 50 company in early 2024 paid the highest publicly known ransom in history – $75 million – to the Dark Angels ransomware group. Despite law enforcement crackdowns, 48 new ransomware groups emerged in 2024, and over the past three months, ransomware attacks have surged to record levels to nearly 600 attacks a month.
Demand for ransomware negotiators is high in this threat environment, and victims can benefit from a negotiator even if they have no intention of paying the threat actor, said Grayson North, a ransomware negotiator and principal threat analyst at GuidePoint Security.
“Important information can be gleaned pertaining to the scope of stolen data even without money changing hands. This information helps to inform and accelerate other parallel workstreams, such as forensics and the legal assessment of notification requirements,” North said.
“If an organization finds themselves needing to pay a ransom, a negotiator almost always pays for themselves by applying knowledge of specific threat actors and their tendencies to reduce demands.”
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