As ransomware gangs operate on multi-million dollar budgets at a global scale, telling companies to “just patch” or “implement zero trust” is no longer feasible
ve talked about ransomware and extortion attacks on organizations for about a decade. Tweets: @jaredhaight , @divinetechygirl , @justincormack , @simbakke , @ciaranmartinoxf , @drjessicabarker , and @gossithedog Tweets: Jared Haight / @jaredhaight : Incredible article by @GossiTheDog offering insight into why ransomware is such a massive threat to society and how we are totally unprepared for it. So many great points in here. https://twitter.com/... @divinetechygirl : The whole truth and nothing but the truth. “The tools companies buy are often too complicated to be deployed correctly in the real world...Particular pain points, such as Identity and Privilege Management tools, are simply too beasty for many organizations to implement well..”👇🏾 https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Justin Cormack / @justincormack : “Put simply, ransomware gangs have a monetized way of exploiting the condition many organisations are in when it comes to IT and security.” https://twitter.com/... Simen Bakke / @simbakke : “In the first 3 days of last week alone, I tracked 23 new ransomware and extortion victims, who are fighting attacks (most have not disclosed to the media). This Monday, I tracked 43 new organised ransomware gang incidents — before mid-day.” https://doublepulsar.com/... Ciaran Martin / @ciaranmartinoxf : Stunningly good, (long) must-read from @GossiTheDog on #ransomware. So much here: the importance of the Irish healthcare case; the difficulty for small orgs of doing security well; we should stop hand-waving away the debate on payment bans, and much more 👏 👏 👏 https://twitter.com/... Jess / @drjessicabarker : “One ransomware group receiving a $40m payment for attacking a cybersecurity insurance company gives the attackers more budget to launch a cyberattack than most medium to large organizations have to defend against attacks in total.” A must-read by @GossiTheDog ⤵️ https://twitter.com/... Kevin Beaumont / @gossithedog : @cyb3rops My take: https://doublepulsar.com/... (and talk to @decalage2 as he can tell you exactly what to do). https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Kevin Beaumont's argument lands after a decade-long escalation arc: crypto-ransomware turned intrusions into paydays as early as 2016, then the business model flipped from many small payments to a smaller set of large targets paying massive ransoms — including, per his reporting, a $40M payment extracted from a cybersecurity insurer itself.
The piece matters now because the policy machinery is already moving: a task force of 60+ experts from industry, government, nonprofits, and academia has called on the US and allies to act against the surge, while victims increasingly route through intermediaries like negotiator Kurtis Minder. Beaumont's point is that the standard defender advice no longer matches an adversary with global reach and multi-million dollar budgets.
First-order effects
- Companies relying on the patch-and-harden playbook are told it cannot keep pace with organized extortion groups — Simen Bakke's tracking of dozens of new incidents shows the volume defenders face, and the observation that bought tools are often too complicated to deploy correctly undercuts vendor-led fixes.
- Security commentators amplifying the piece — including Jared Haight, Justin Cormack, and former GCHQ/NCSC figures like Ciaran Martin — push the framing into mainstream board-level discussion that ransomware is a societal problem, not a per-company IT failure.
Second-order effects
- Demand shifts toward services outside traditional product purchases: negotiation specialists, incident response, and insurance become the de facto coping mechanism for organizations that cannot meet the hardening bar.
- Tool vendors face a credibility problem — if their products routinely go misdeployed against funded adversaries, buyers will press for managed outcomes rather than more consoles, reshaping how security budgets get spent.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, responsibility migrates upward from individual IT departments to collective structures — the expert task force's call for coordinated state action points toward ransomware treated as national-security policy rather than a compliance checklist item.
- The visible impact on everyday life documented in recent coverage raises the odds of regulatory intervention targeting both attacker economics (payments, laundering) and minimum defender standards, with insurers as a lever since they absorb the losses.
The trend: Ransomware's industrialization is outgrowing per-company defense advice, shifting the burden toward negotiated payouts, insurance markets, and coordinated government action.