Ransomware attacks on a business can be devastating, especially for smaller businesses who may not have access to an army of IT professionals.

In its The State of Ransomware report for 2021, Sophos found that the cost of recovery from a ransomware attack was ~R6.4 million. The firm also found that the average ransom paid was ~R2.4 million so one can understand why companies simply pay the ransom.

The trouble is that cybercriminals aren’t always the most trustworthy people and one could pay a ransom and receive a decryption tool that does nothing.

That is why an email from Kaspersky this morning caught our attention. The email mentioned a website called No More Ransom which, we’ll be honest, we hadn’t heard of before but was quickly added to our Bookmarks.

The initiative was launched in 2016 by the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Kaspersky and McAfee. No More Ransom seeks to help victims of ransomware retrieve their data without paying a ransom.

To date, more than 1.5 million people have used the service to decrypt their data. No More Ransom covers 165 ransomware families and the decryption tools are free to download. For those who don’t know what ransomware they are being targeted by, No More Ransom features a tool that will detect what family your infection is from.

While the project had small beginnings, there are now 188 partners contributing decryption tools in 37 languages.

“I’m extremely happy that we are able to assist people and companies in ‘restoring’ their digital assets, without paying the attackers. This way we hit the criminals where it hurts – their business model – as users are no longer forced to pay to decrypt their data. We will keep on fighting ransomware with our existing and future partners,” said Jornt van der Weil, security researcher at the Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team.

Not only does No More Ransom feature decryption tools, it also answers frequently asked questions about ransomware and how to prevent an infection.

We highly recommend you take note of No More Ransom, you never know when you may need it.