The following is my personal account of the 72 hours that nearly destroyed my company. I’m sharing this story not for sympathy, but because every CEO needs to understand what they’re truly up against. The technical details have been sanitized, but the human cost remains raw and real.
Tuesday, 3:47 AM - The Call That Changes Everything
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. In 25 years of running companies, middle-of-the-night calls never bring good news. Our Head of IT, Sarah, is on the line, and I can hear the tremor in her voice.
“Marcus, we have a problem. A big one. Everything’s locked.”
I’m sitting up now, fully awake. “Define everything.”
“Every server. Every workstation. Every backup we can access. There’s a message on every screen: ‘Your files have been encrypted.’”
The room feels like it’s tilting. We’re a mid-size manufacturing company with 2,400 employees across six states. We don’t just make widgets – we make components for medical devices, automotive safety systems, and aerospace applications. When we stop, people’s lives are literally at stake.
Hour 1-6: The Immediate Aftermath
By 4:30 AM, I’m in the office. The scene is surreal – dozens of screens glowing with identical ransom messages. Our cybersecurity team looks like they’ve aged a decade in a few hours. Sarah walks me through what they know:
- Initial penetration happened sometime Sunday night
- The attackers moved laterally for 36 hours before triggering the encryption
- They specifically targeted our backups first
- The ransom demand: $2.8 million in Bitcoin
“How long were they inside?” I ask.
“Based on the logs we can still access… maybe two months.”
Two months. They’ve been watching us, learning our systems, identifying our crown jewels. This isn’t some script kiddie throwing spaghetti at the wall. This is surgical.
I call our cyber insurance carrier. The claims representative, bless her, is genuinely sympathetic, but the process is going to take time. Time we don’t have.
Hour 6-12: The Cascade Effect Begins
By morning, the reality starts hitting home. Our main production line – the one that makes critical automotive brake components – is completely down. We have contractual obligations to deliver 50,000 units by Friday. Miss that deadline, and we face $1.2 million in penalties.
The phones start ringing. Customers, suppliers, investors. I make the hardest call of my career – to our biggest client’s CEO, explaining that their supply chain just broke.
“Marcus, I’ve got assembly lines that will shut down by Thursday if you can’t deliver,” he says. There’s no anger in his voice, just the cold reality of interdependent business. “We’re scrambling to find alternative suppliers, but…”
But there aren’t any. We’re their single source for this component, and it has an 18-month lead time from other manufacturers.
Meanwhile, our legal team is fielding calls from regulators. Since we handle aerospace contracts, the Department of Defense wants a full briefing. The FDA is concerned about our medical device components. Each agency wants immediate answers we don’t have.
Hour 12-24: The Human Cost
By Tuesday evening, I’m standing in front of 200 employees in our main facility. Word has spread, and the anxiety is palpable. These aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet – they’re people with mortgages, kids heading to college, medical bills.
“I won’t lie to you,” I tell them. “This is the biggest challenge our company has ever faced. We’re working around the clock to resolve it, but I need you to know that some of you may face temporary layoffs if this extends beyond a week.”
I see tears. I see anger. I see fear. Maria from accounting, who’s been with us for 18 years, raises her hand: “Are we going to be okay?”
I want to say yes. I want to promise that everything will be fine. Instead, I tell her the truth: “I don’t know yet. But I promise you this – I will not stop fighting for this company and everyone in it.”
After the meeting, I sit in my office and do something I haven’t done since my father died – I cry. Not just for the company, but for every person whose life I’ve just turned upside down.
Hour 24-36: The Negotiation Dance
Against the advice of the FBI (who wants us to refuse all contact with the attackers) and our lawyers (who worry about legal implications), we open communication with the ransomware group. They call themselves “DarkCrypt” – probably teenagers in a basement somewhere, treating our lives like a video game.
The initial contact comes through an encrypted chat platform:
DarkCrypt: “Your encryption is military grade. No recovery without our key. Payment required within 72 hours or price doubles.”
Us: “We need proof you can decrypt our files.”
They provide a sample decryption of a non-critical file. It works.
Us: “2.8 million is impossible. Our company doesn’t have that kind of liquid capital.”
DarkCrypt: “Not our problem. You have insurance. Pay or watch your business die.”
The cold calculation is chilling. They’ve clearly done their research – they know about our insurance policy, our revenue, our cash position. This isn’t random; it’s targeted and personal.
Hour 36-48: The Difficult Decisions
Our crisis management team is running on caffeine and sheer willpower. We’ve been joined by specialists from our insurance company, FBI cybercrime division, and outside security consultants. The conference room looks like a disaster response center, with whiteboards covered in timelines, decision trees, and financial calculations.
The insurance company delivers the verdict: they’ll cover $1.8 million of the ransom, but we need to exhaust all other recovery options first. Their forensics team estimates a 15% chance of successful data recovery without paying. Those odds, frankly, suck.
Our chief financial officer, Janet, lays out the stark mathematics:
- Pay the ransom: $2.8 million upfront, plus unknown recovery time
- Don’t pay: Rebuild everything from scratch over 4-6 months, estimated cost $8-12 million
- Hybrid approach: Pay for critical systems only, rebuild the rest
“There’s a fourth option,” I say quietly. “We shut down, liquidate assets, and try to minimize losses.”
The room goes silent. In 72 hours, we’ve gone from a thriving business to discussing bankruptcy.
Hour 48-60: The Breaking Point
By Wednesday night, three things happen simultaneously that push us over the edge:
First, our biggest customer formally notifies us they’re terminating our contract due to breach of supply obligations. That’s 40% of our revenue, gone.
Second, our bank calls. News of the cyberattack has leaked, and they’re “reviewing our credit facilities.” Corporate speak for: we’re cutting off your funding.
Third, the ransomware group contacts us again: “Price is now 5.6 million. You waited too long. Pay in 24 hours or we release your customer data publicly.”
They have our customer data. Names, addresses, purchasing histories, internal communications. If that gets released, we’re not just looking at business interruption – we’re looking at class-action lawsuits, regulatory fines, and criminal liability.
I call an emergency board meeting for Thursday morning.
Hour 60-72: The Decision
Thursday’s board meeting is the most difficult three hours of my professional life. We have five options, none good:
- Pay the full ransom: $5.6 million, with no guarantee of full recovery
- Pay the original amount: $2.8 million, hoping they honor the old price
- Refuse payment: Face data release, continue rebuilding efforts
- Negotiate: Try to buy time and reduce the amount
- Liquidate: Cut losses and close the company
Board member after board member weighs in. The retired executives want to fight – “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” The newer members are focused on minimizing losses. Our employee representative pleads for any solution that saves jobs.
Finally, I make the call: “We pay. Not because it’s right, but because it’s the least wrong option available to us.”
The vote is 6-3 in favor of payment.
The Payment and Aftermath
The actual payment process is surprisingly mundane. Our cybersecurity consultant walks us through setting up a Bitcoin wallet, purchasing cryptocurrency through a legitimate exchange, and transferring it to the attackers’ address. It takes about four hours and costs us $5.6 million.
The decryption key arrives within six hours. It works – mostly. About 15% of our data is corrupted and unrecoverable. We’re able to restart production after 96 hours of downtime, but we’ve lost two major customers and 18% of our workforce.
Three months later, we’re still recovering. The attack cost us:
- $5.6 million in ransom
- $2.1 million in lost revenue
- $800,000 in consultant fees
- $1.2 million in contractual penalties
- $3.2 million in employee severance and replacement costs
Total: $12.9 million. Our insurance covered $4.2 million.
What I Learned (The Hard Way)
1. Ransomware isn’t a technology problem – it’s a business continuity crisis. Every decision becomes a choice between bad options. Technology recovery is just one component of a much larger operational, financial, and legal disaster.
2. The attackers are businesses, not hackers. They have customer service departments, negotiation tactics, and market intelligence. They knew our financial position better than some of our own board members.
3. Cyber insurance is essential but insufficient. Our policy covered less than half the total cost. The indirect costs – lost customers, damaged reputation, employee turnover – aren’t insurable.
4. The human cost is the highest cost. Watching longtime employees clean out their desks, explaining to customers why we broke decades-old relationships, seeing the stress lines appear on my leadership team’s faces – these scars don’t heal quickly.
5. Prevention is everything. We spent $300,000 annually on cybersecurity. The attack cost us nearly $13 million. Do the math.
To My Fellow CEOs
If you’re reading this thinking “that could never happen to us,” you’re already making the same mistake I did. We had firewalls, antivirus, employee training, and backup systems. We checked every compliance box.
None of it mattered when a sophisticated adversary decided to target us.
Here’s what I wish I’d done differently:
- Invested in advanced threat detection, not just prevention
- Conducted regular tabletop exercises for ransomware scenarios
- Maintained truly isolated backup systems (air-gapped, not just offline)
- Purchased higher cyber insurance limits with broader coverage
- Established relationships with incident response firms before we needed them
Most importantly, I wish I’d understood that cybersecurity isn’t an IT problem – it’s an existential business risk that belongs in every board discussion, every strategic plan, and every budget conversation.
The attackers are treating this as a business. Until we do the same, we’ll keep being surprised by their professionalism, their preparation, and their ruthlessness.
The Epilogue
We survived. Barely. Six months later, we’re profitable again, though smaller than before. We’ve invested heavily in cybersecurity – not just technology, but processes, training, and culture. Every employee now understands that security isn’t IT’s job; it’s everyone’s job.
Would I make the same decision again? Pay the ransom? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that no CEO should ever have to make that choice without preparation, without support systems, and without truly understanding what’s at stake.
The next call is coming. Maybe not tonight, maybe not this year, but it’s coming. The only question is: will you be ready?
Marcus Chen led TechManufacturing Inc. through one of the largest ransomware attacks in manufacturing history. He now serves as a crisis management consultant and speaks regularly about cyber resilience. He can be reached at crisis-consulting.com.
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