IT managers refuse to pay ransomware demands: Survey

Fifty two out of 175 Australian organisations were targeted according to results

IT managers in Australia have stood up to ransomware demands and declined to pay according to the results of a Galaxy Research/Mimecast survey.

Fifty two out of 175 IT managers surveyed during July were the target of ransomware. However, none of those targeted said they paid the ransom.

Eighty two per cent of those surveyed said it would be unlikely their company would pay a ransom if they were targeted in the future and only 5 per cent said their organisation would pay a ransom to get their data back.

Turning to general IT threats, 99 per cent of IT managers said they were prepared for viruses while 98 per cent said they were prepared for malware.

However, the respondents were least prepared to deal with e-discovery, with only 48 per cent saying they are prepared for this.

Approximately 46 per cent of IT managers said their business spends less than $10,000 per year on email security.

The survey also found that 19 per cent of IT managers were unaware how much their organisation spends on email security each year. Fifty nine per cent of respondents estimated that their organisation spends less than $20,000 per year on email management, archiving and recovery.

The survey also asked IT managers about data hosting. It found that 77 per cent of IT managers consider it important for their business and customer data to be hosted within Australia. Legal and compliance requirementswere the key reason for storing business and customer data in Australia (78 per cent).

Other reasons included latency and application performance (75 per cent), to allay potential customer concerns around data location (72 per cent) and a distrust of foreign national governments (50 per cent).

Sixty two per cent of IT managers aged 50 years and older said they were much more likely to distrust overseas governments. Meanwhile, only 30 per cent of managers aged 34 years or younger had issues trusting overseas governments with their data.

Eighty three per cent of IT managers would be more likely to choose a supplier or partner who had an Australian data centre or colocation data centre.

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