Ran$umBin tries to turn doxxing into a business. Are you ready?

Don't panic. Attackers rely on fear, surprise, and confusion to manipulate their victims. Many such attacks are merely bluffs, while others can be dealt with without paying up if you keep a cool head and reach out to experts.

Hold onto your wallet. For many attackers, paying up is a sign that they can come back for seconds, thirds, etc. Think hard before even considering paying a bounty, and do some research. Two of the more popular ransomware tools, CoinVault and Bitcryptor, were completely defeated with the keys required to undo their damage all now being made freely available.

Prevention is the best defense. Once your network has been compromised, you've obviously lost a lot of leverage. But that's often when organizations begin to think about security. Instead, make sure that your organization, from top to bottom, is well trained on how attackers get in, usually with a mix of targeted phishing attacks, unpatched but known security holes, and common social engineering techniques, rather than impressive but relatively rare zero days. Educate all employees on how to properly vet emails, educate the backup and recovery team about potential threats, and make sure that nobody is exempted from security education: Recent attacks often masquerade as top executives demanding special exemptions, which has sent mid-level employees scrambling with no questions asked — right into the attacker's hands.