Usually, no. U.S. government guidance discourages paying a ransomware demand because payment does not guarantee a working decryptor, deletion or non-disclosure of stolen data, or an end to the attack. It can also create sanctions exposure and help finance further crime. Treat payment as a last-resort decision only after containment, evidence preservation, recovery analysis, incident reporting, and a jurisdiction-specific legal review.
Why paying ransomware is not a reliable recovery plan
Ransomware commonly combines two pressures: systems or files are encrypted, and the attacker threatens to publish or misuse information copied before encryption. A transfer of money addresses neither problem with certainty.
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A payment may not produce usable decryption
Criminals can provide no decryptor, provide a broken or incomplete tool, demand more money, or disappear. Even a working key may not restore systems quickly if servers, applications, backups, or identity infrastructure were also damaged. The FBI’s ransomware guidance warns that payment does not assure recovery.
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Attackers may retain access, leave additional malware, create new accounts, or return later. Paying also does not ensure that stolen files will be deleted or kept confidential. If data was exfiltrated, assume the confidentiality incident still requires investigation and, where applicable, notification.
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Payment can sustain criminal operations
Government agencies state that ransom payments help fund criminal activity and can encourage additional attacks. The 2025 #StopRansomware Guide, Part 2: Ransomware and Data Extortion Response Checklist states: “The authoring organizations do not recommend paying ransom.” That is a recommendation, not a promise that every victim has an easy alternative; essential services, patient care, public safety, and business continuity can make the decision extremely difficult.
What to do before discussing payment
Do not negotiate from a still-compromised network or destroy evidence in an attempt to get systems running. Use your incident-response plan and qualified responders to establish what happened and what can be recovered.
1. Activate the incident-response plan
- Declare an incident under your organization’s escalation process and assign an incident lead.
- Use approved emergency communications. Assume ordinary email, chat, and file shares may be monitored or unavailable; responders can advise on trusted channels.
- Record timelines, ransom notes, wallet addresses, domains, filenames, and observed symptoms. Preserve logs and other evidence as directed by investigators.
- Involve executive leadership, legal counsel, privacy or compliance staff, communications personnel, and business owners for critical services.
2. Contain the spread
CISA’s checklist calls for identifying impacted systems and isolating them. Disconnect affected computers, servers, storage, and network segments from wired and wireless networks when it is safe to do so. If many systems appear affected, responders may recommend taking network equipment offline at the switch level. Do not simply power off every device without a plan: volatile evidence and essential safety functions may be lost. Follow the instructions of your incident team.
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3. Contact experienced responders and authorities
Engage qualified incident-response and digital-forensics professionals to determine the initial access route, attacker persistence, encryption scope, and data theft. Report promptly to the FBI or CISA and request assistance. The FBI’s ransomware factsheet encourages victims to contact a local FBI field office, whether or not payment is being considered. Reporting can help investigators identify related infrastructure and may reveal that a decryptor or broader campaign information exists.
4. Protect evidence and credentials
Preserve ransom notes, malware samples, endpoint alerts, authentication logs, cloud audit records, and firewall or VPN data. Reset credentials through a controlled process, beginning with privileged, service, remote-access, and identity-provider accounts. Rebuild trust in the identity system rather than assuming a password change alone removed an attacker.
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Can you recover files without paying?
Often, the safest recovery route is to rebuild from clean systems and restore from backups. The outcome depends on backup coverage, how recently it was created, whether the attacker reached it, and whether the restored environment is genuinely clean.
Use offline, encrypted backups
CISA recommends offline, encrypted backups and regular restoration testing. “Offline” means the backup is not continuously reachable from the production network or ordinary administrator credentials. An external hard drive for offline backups can be one medium, but it should be disconnected whenever it is not actively being used. Maintain more than one backup copy and protect backup-management accounts with strong, separate credentials and multifactor authentication where available.
Validate before restoring
- Have responders scan and assess backup systems and backup catalogs for tampering or malware.
- Choose a clean recovery environment separated from compromised networks and identities.
- Restore a representative sample first, including applications, databases, permissions, and configuration—not only documents.
- Verify that restored data is complete, current, and usable by the people and systems that depend on it.
- Rebuild or remediate the original environment, close the initial access route, and monitor closely before reconnecting broader operations.
Consider other recovery sources
Depending on the incident, responders may find unaffected replicas, snapshots, cloud version histories, removable media, paper records, or data held by trusted partners. These are not automatically safe: an attacker who had administrative access may have altered or deleted them. Treat every source as untrusted until checked.
How to compare recovery paths
There is no government-approved ranking that guarantees one option will work for every victim. Compare each path against the same operational and legal criteria:
| Criterion | Questions to answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Time to restore | When can critical services return, and what must be rebuilt first? | A short claimed timeline is not useful if the environment remains compromised. |
| Cleanliness | What evidence shows systems and backups are free of persistence and malware? | Restoring into an infected network can restart the incident. |
| Data completeness | How recent and complete are backups, replicas, and other copies? | Older or partial data may leave essential records unavailable. |
| Further-compromise risk | Has the initial access path been closed and privileged access rebuilt? | Any remaining foothold can cause repeat encryption or theft. |
| Data exposure | What information was copied, and what notification duties follow? | Payment does not prove that stolen information was deleted. |
| Legal and sanctions constraints | Who would pay, who would receive funds, and what intermediaries or jurisdictions are involved? | A transfer can create legal risk even when operations are urgent. |
| Cost and operational impact | What staff time, downtime, rebuilding, investigation, and communication work does each option require? | The ransom is only one component of the total incident cost. |
Legal and sanctions issues before any transfer
U.S. sanctions law does not produce a single answer for every ransomware payment. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an Updated Advisory on Potential Sanctions Risks for Facilitating Ransomware Payments on September 21, 2021. It warns that U.S. persons and businesses that make or facilitate payments can face sanctions risk when the recipient is sanctioned or a transaction has another sanctions nexus.
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OFAC describes the advisory as explanatory and says it has no force of law. That does not make a proposed payment safe. Sanctions lists, designations, payment routes, intermediaries, currencies, and applicable rules can change. Do not infer that every payment is automatically prohibited, or that an apparently unsanctioned recipient is automatically permissible.
Get a transaction-specific legal review
Before authorizing or facilitating a transfer, ask counsel experienced in sanctions and cyber incidents to assess:
- the victim, payer, insurer, parent company, and other involved parties;
- the suspected recipient, wallet, broker, exchange, and payment intermediary;
- any connection to sanctioned persons, jurisdictions, services, or infrastructure;
- reporting, record-keeping, anti-money-laundering, and law-enforcement obligations;
- data-protection and breach-notification requirements for information that may have been stolen; and
- insurance policy conditions, cooperation duties, approval requirements, and exclusions.
Keep the legal analysis current immediately before any proposed transaction. A ransom note, negotiator, or cryptocurrency service cannot replace independent advice.
Data theft changes the decision
Encryption recovery and privacy response are separate workstreams. Investigators should determine whether files were staged or transferred, what categories of information were involved, and whether attacker claims are credible. Coordinate forensic findings with counsel and privacy or compliance teams. Depending on the jurisdiction and information affected, notification to customers, employees, regulators, partners, or law enforcement may be required. A payment should never be presented to affected people as proof that their information is safe.
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Prompt reporting to the FBI and/or CISA is recommended in joint U.S. guidance. Preserve the original ransom note and technical indicators when reporting. Keep employees, customers, suppliers, and public authorities informed through a controlled communications plan; avoid publishing unverified claims about the attacker, the scope of stolen data, or the likelihood of recovery.
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Prioritize services by safety and mission impact. Define temporary manual procedures, alternate contact methods, and minimum data needed to resume critical operations. Record every restoration decision so that investigators and auditors can reconstruct what happened.
What the Play ransomware advisory illustrates
CISA, the FBI, MS-ISAC, and Australia’s ACSC updated a Play ransomware advisory on June 4, 2025. It reports that the FBI was aware of approximately 900 entities allegedly exploited by Play actors as of May 2025. That figure applies specifically to the Play advisory; it is not a count of all ransomware victims. The example demonstrates why an organization should report even when it believes its incident is isolated: campaign intelligence can connect victims, infrastructure, and techniques.
Prepare so payment is less likely to be considered
Build backups that attackers cannot easily reach
- Keep encrypted copies offline or otherwise isolated from production credentials.
- Separate backup administration from everyday user accounts and require strong authentication.
- Maintain documented retention periods and more than one recovery location or medium.
- Monitor for mass deletion, unusual backup access, and configuration changes.
Test restoration, not just backup completion
A green backup job does not prove that an application can be restored. Schedule exercises that restore representative files, databases, identity services, and complete critical workflows. Measure how long each step takes and update recovery priorities when systems or dependencies change.
Practice the first-hour response
Ensure staff know how to isolate a device, report a ransom note, preserve evidence, and reach the incident team. Keep emergency contacts and offline copies of response procedures available if corporate systems are unavailable.
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Do not treat a ransom demand as a normal bill or a guaranteed purchase of recovery. Contain the incident, preserve evidence, call qualified responders, report to the FBI or CISA, inspect clean backups, and address data theft. Have sanctions and cyber counsel evaluate the exact parties and transaction before anyone transfers funds. If reliable recovery and continuity can be achieved without payment, that path avoids the decryptor, repeat-attack, disclosure, and sanctions uncertainties that payment leaves unresolved.
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