Businesses stockpile Bitcoin for ransomware payments

More companies are prepared to pay ransomware attackers to regain access to their systems and data and are stocking up on Bitcoin for that purpose, a survey by remote access vendor Citrix has found.

Citrix asked 500 IT decision makers in British companies with 250 or more employees what their strategies to survive ransomware attacks were, and found that around half are hoarding the cryptocurrency in case of ransomware attacks.

The survey found that the businesses are prepared to pay blackmailers an average of £136, 235 (A$234,000), up 361 percent from last year.

Some 42 percent of companies said they were stockpiling Bitcoin, which is up from a third of surveyed companies last year. One in three keep more than 30 Bitcoin on standby, woth A$109,000 as of writing.

The number of companies not prepared to pay ransom dropped from 25 percent in last year's Citrix survey to 22 percent.

Citrix said stockpiling cryptocurrencies for ransomware payout contingencies isn't an insurance to help recover from attacks.

There is no guarantee that the data encrypted by ransomware will be rendered accessible again after payment, and companies should instead look at ways to secure and protect their data and neworks.