Defeating the growing threat of ransomware Ransomware is notoriously difficult to stop. Once it infects devices, its victims face the hard decision of either paying the attackers for a key to unlock the data or forever losing their files. A recent Malwarebytes-sponsored global survey of IT executives¹ demonstrates the scale of the business threat. Thirty-nine percent of the organizations surveyed had been impacted by a ransomware attack during the previous 12 months. Across the various industries surveyed, ransomware attacks were most common in the healthcare and financial services-related industries, including banking and insurance.