Kurtis Minder has some advice about how to negotiate with criminals who extort millions of dollars by crippling companies’ computer systems and stealing their data: Don’t call them “bad guys.”
“The bad guys know they are bad guys—they are trying to pretend to be businesspeople,” says Minder, who, as CEO of cyber-intelligence specialist GroupSense, has negotiated on behalf of at least two dozen organizations targeted with so-called ransomware. “As long as you pretend with them that this is just a normal business transaction, it goes better.”