“Ransomware actors have become some of the most technically adept in the cyber crime industry”

Cast your mind back to the end of July when the world stopped for people who not only like to run but have an almost obsessive need to record details of every last step. Garmin, the technology titan when it comes to smartwatch GPS for runners, suffered a multi-day service outage. The outage, as many of us within the infosec community suspected, was actually a ransomware attack. It took Garmin four days to almost admit as much. I say “almost” because the nearest it came to uttering the “R” word at the time was to say that it had been the victim of a “cyberattack that encrypted some of our systems”.

This didn’t surprise me. It’s an approach I’ve seen over and over from businesses big and small, unwilling to admit to having been caught napping by ransomware actors. It’s not the most embarrassing confession to make these days: ransomware actors have become some of the most technically adept and successful in the cybercrime industry. But rather than holding Garmin’s feet over the fire, I thought it might be helpful to devote this column to how the response to a ransomware attack plays out in the real world. This