ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GroupSense, a digital risk protection services company, today announced it has signed a deal with a major U.S. city to provide its COVID-19 Vaccine Threat Protection offering. This first-of-its-kind service offering uses cyber threat monitoring, similar to the approach GroupSense uses in its Election Threat Protection offering. This service provides the most comprehensive package available to protect the city and its millions of residents against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, disinformation and supply disruptions from cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks.

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GroupSense CEO and Co-Founder Kurtis Minder ponders the question, "To negotiate or not negotiate on ransomware?"

As a part of our series about “5 Things You Need To Know To Tighten Up Your Company’s Approach to Data Privacy and Cybersecurity”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kurtis Minder, CEO and co-founder of GroupSense.

For every high-profile ransomware incident in the headlines, there are many more that never get reported. Particularly among small- and medium-sized businesses, often with small IT and cybersecurity teams, a ransomware attack can be an existential problem.

Kurtis Minder, CEO of GroupSense, joins Dennis Fisher to discuss the delicate process of ransomware negotiations and how enterprises are dealing with infections today.

It's not very clear what room for maneuvering is left for incident response companies to assist their clients with ransomware attacks and whether providing information about the attackers, engaging with them to test whether they're able to actually decrypt files or to negotiate a lower ransom would qualify as "facilitating" a transaction under the OFAC regulations. "Frankly, that puts us in an interesting situation with a client, where we say: 'Hey, we are not able to facilitate payments. Can we still negotiate on your behalf? Absolutely. And we can validate all the keys and do all of those things to get you to the point where you can do a transaction but we cannot do a transaction'," Kurtis Minder, CEO of threat intelligence firm GroupSense, tells CSO.

Kurtis Minder, CEO of GroupSense, a company that offers ransomware negotiation services, told SC Media that most large ransomware groups with multiple concurrent victims deploy automatic, pre-determined answers through the early stages of a negotiation until it progresses far enough to warrant human interaction. Similar to the business world, ransomware managers are seemingly looking to make sure their workers’ time is being spent wisely.

Threat intelligence firm GroupSense is one recent example. Earlier this month, the company introduced a new service that it says can help ransomware victims navigate a slew of issues following an attack. According to GroupSense, it can help organizations evaluate and confirm attacks, negotiate with threat actors to reduce ransom demands, manage cryptocurrency payments, arrange for the destruction of any stolen data, and carry out other post-transaction activities.

While FBI is urging ransomware victims not to pay any ransom to hackers as it encourages crime, a Cybersecurity firm from Virginia says that it will offer a ransomware consultation and negotiation service on an official note to deal with a situation.