The practice of demanding a ransom in exchange for the release of a person or an item has been part of the human experience dating at least as far back as Julius Caesar, who was captured by pirates who then demanded a payment of twenty talents for his release (Plutarch). Although Caesar was eventually released, not all ransom demands in history resulted in the safe return of the captured, or even the payment to the captors. With the advent of computers and the digitalization of data and assets, it was inevitable that ransom demands would find their way into the digital landscape in the form of ransomware. A portmanteau of the words ransom and malware, ransomware is a form of malware that, when it has been deployed, will encrypt data on a computer and demand a ransom for the key to unencrypt the data. The purpose of the paper is to explore ransomware and its global implications, not only on local and global economies, but also on industrial firms and what, if anything, can be done to protect ourselves from future attacks.

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