Your decision: Senior professionals’ decision making during a simulated ransomware attack

The current authors surveyed 315 senior professionals of Swiss organisations for their decision making in a simulated ransomware attack. They were put into the shoes of a chief executive officer (CEO) of a fictitious organisation that is victim of a ransomware attack. The study described in this paper used an interactive ransomware simulation presentation. In three stages, study participants voted for their preferred course of action using the mentimeter.com platform. The results of this study help to better understand senior professionals’ preferred choices in ransomware decision dilemmas. It shows that most decision makers would report an attack to authorities and would not pay a ransom. In reality, however, this preferable path of action might not always be observable, ex post. The current authors call for decision makers to be more sensitive about ransomware decision dilemmas to strengthen business continuity operations. This can help to increase crisis management efficiency and effectiveness while minimising losses.