Last week Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center said it paid hackers $17,000 in virtual currency bitcoin to get out from under a malware attack that locked access to certain computer systems and prevented the hospital from sharing communications electronically.
But is this practice advised, and is it covered by insurance?
To start, a survey early this year from nonprofit Cloud Security Alliance found that 24.6 percent of companies would be willing to pay a ransom to hackers to prevent a cyberattack and 14 percent would pay more than $1 million.
Chad Hemenway, Should you cough up money to hackers?, Advisen News (February 29, 2016), available with subscription at Advisen Cyber Front Page News.
