Why Paying Ransom Makes You a Repeat Target

When companies fall victim to ransomware one painful lesson has become clear: paying the ransom does not end the nightmare. Rather, it often marks the beginning of repeated attacks. A recent article from the Australian Computer Society (ACS), “Paid a ransom?

Be prepared to be hit again…and again…” reports on research from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) that looked at ransomware victims across Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The findings are deeply troubling. Information Age+1

Many businesses assume that once they pay, the attackers will leave them alone—but that assumption is dangerously wrong. According to the study, past victims often receive multiple ransom demands, sometimes two or three within the same year. SME owners tend to be especially vulnerable. Their public-facing presence—websites, social media, public email contacts—makes them easy to find and re-target.

What this data makes painfully clear is that paying a ransom does not guarantee safety or data recovery. Often it only buys a temporary reprieve. Because of that, many security experts warn that ransom payments may do more harm than good.

Why Paying Ransom Encourages Repeat Attacks

• You become “marked.” Once hackers know you will pay, your business becomes a recurring target. The AIC study confirms that paying increases the likelihood of future attacks.

• Attackers profit and reinvest. Ransom payments fund future operations and encourage more aggressive or frequent demands. This creates an incentive for attackers to revisit previous victims.

• Defenses remain weak. Many SMEs pay without fundamentally changing or improving their security posture, leaving the door open for attackers to slip in again. The AIC data shows this pattern—frequent re-extortion is common among paying victims.

• Payment doesn’t guarantee data return. Even after paying, there’s no guarantee all files will be restored or that attackers won’t come back with new demands. This has been repeatedly documented in global studies.

Clearly, “pay and pray” is not a viable strategy. Businesses need a defense posture that doesn’t rely on luck or goodwill from criminals.

Why the “Detect and Respond” Model Falls Short

Most traditional cybersecurity setups are based on detecting attacks, responding after the fact, and relying on backups or decryption. This reactive approach is increasingly ineffective against modern ransomware. Attackers have become more skilled—including deploying stealthy, polymorphic malware designed to evade detection, or embedding backdoors for repeated access.

Additionally, as many as 74% of repeat ransomware victims say they struggle with too many security tools that do not integrate well, creating blind spots that attackers exploit. The result is fragmented, incomplete defenses.

In short, detection-based strategies leave too many gaps. They wait for the enemy to strike before reacting—and in many cases, that is already too late.

The Case for Moving to “Isolation and Containment”

What organizations need today is a proactive, resilient defense that neutralizes threats before they can do damage. That is the value proposition of AppGuard, a mature endpoint protection solution with a proven 10-year track record.

AppGuard works by isolating applications and containing their behavior — blocking unauthorized or suspicious activity in real time, rather than waiting to detect malware after it has already infiltrated the system. This approach dramatically reduces the risk of ransomware execution, file encryption or exfiltration, and ensures that even if a malicious payload reaches an endpoint, it is unable to carry out harmful operations.

Because AppGuard does not rely on signatures or detection heuristics alone, it can defend against zero-day threats, polymorphic malware, and advanced persistent threats that evade traditional antivirus tools. With the growing sophistication of ransomware strains and attackers’ willingness to re-target paying victims, containment becomes the last line of defense that actually stops the attack vector at build-up — not after damage is done.

What Recent Research Shows

• The 2025 report from ACS / AIC reveals high repeat-attack rates for businesses that pay ransom.

• Global cyber security analyses show that ransomware victims often pay again, sometimes multiple times, and may never recover all data.

• Many organizations are struggling with fragmented defenses, too many uncoordinated tools, and poor integration — all conditions that favor attackers.

Combined these findings make one thing clear: the old approach of “find it, then respond” is no longer sufficient. It is not enough to detect threats; you must stop them — before they strike.

What This Means for Business Owners

If your organization has ever considered paying ransom to recover data, or believed backups and reactive detection were good enough — think again. Paying ransom may feel like the only option, but it can quickly backfire and make your company a target for repeat attacks.

What you need is a modern, proactive endpoint defense that assumes attackers are persistent and sophisticated. Isolation and containment — not detection — should be the core principle.

With AppGuard deployed across your endpoints you can dramatically cut the risk of ransomware execution, data loss, and repeated extortion. Today’s malware is designed to bypass traditional defenses and evade detection. AppGuard is designed to stop them outright.

Conclusion

Ransomware criminals thrive on repeat business. Each payment validates their model and marks you as a target for the future. The latest research from ACS underscores how paying ransom makes companies far more likely to be hit again — sometimes multiple times within a year.

For business owners serious about protecting data, operations, and reputation, the choice is clear. Detection after the fact is no longer enough. You must shift to a posture of prevention — using isolation and containment to stop attacks before they start.

If you want to protect your business and avoid becoming a repeat target, talk with us at CHIPS about how AppGuard can defend your organization. Let’s move from Detect and Respond to Isolation and Containment.

If you like, I can also add a short executive-summary plus some statistics for PH businesses to illustrate why this matters globally — could help make the blog more relevant to audiences in the Philippines. Do you want me to build that version now?