Ransomware Kills Businesses. Here Is the Evidence Every Irish SME Owner Must See.

A 158-year-old logistics company. A rural hospital that served its community for over a century. A mental health clinic that had operated for 28 years. A college that had survived two World Wars. All of them are gone — not because they ran out of customers, not because their industry declined, but because of a single ransomware attack.

This is not a collection of hypothetical scenarios or statistics from a vendor whitepaper. These are documented, verified business closures where cybercriminals were the primary cause. If you own or manage an Irish SME, this article contains information that could determine whether your business survives the next five years.

---

The Scale of the Problem: Why Small Businesses Are the Primary Target

There is a common misconception that cybercriminals focus their attention on large corporations. The reality is the opposite. Small and medium-sized businesses are the primary target — not because they hold the most valuable data, but because they are the most vulnerable.

Large organisations have dedicated security teams, enterprise-grade tools, and the financial reserves to absorb an attack. An Irish SME with 20 staff typically has none of these. Cybersecurity is often an afterthought, managed by whoever happens to be "good with computers" alongside their actual job. Legacy systems run unpatched. Backups, if they exist, are connected to the same network as everything else.

The numbers are stark. In 2021, the average ransom demand for a small business was approximately €5,500 — a figure that sounds manageable. But the total cost of recovery from a single ransomware attack on a small business ranges from €750 to over €600,000, once you account for downtime, lost revenue, legal costs, and remediation. Seventy-five per cent of small businesses that experience a ransomware attack would face bankruptcy if forced to bear the full costs of recovery.

The threat has also professionalised dramatically. Groups like Akira, Black Basta, and RansomHub now operate like corporate entities, with specialists for initial access, encryption, and victim negotiation. They use Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) models, meaning even technically unsophisticated criminals can deploy enterprise-grade malware against a small Donegal manufacturer or a rural GP practice.

---

The Anatomy of Failure: How a Cyberattack Becomes a Business Closure

The path from a compromised network to a shuttered business follows a consistent, devastating pattern. Understanding it is the first step to breaking it.

Stage 1: Initial access. In the vast majority of cases, the attacker gets in through a human. A phishing email, a weak password, an unpatched system. The HSE cyberattack of 2021{:target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"} — the largest cyberattack on an Irish state organisation — began with a single staff member opening a malicious email attachment. Your business is not immune to the same entry point.

Stage 2: Lateral movement. Once inside, the attacker moves quietly through the network, escalating privileges and identifying the most valuable data to encrypt. This phase can last days or weeks before the attack is triggered. During this time, the attacker may also be exfiltrating data — copying it out before encrypting it, to use as leverage.

Stage 3: Encryption. The ransomware payload is deployed. Files are encrypted. Systems go dark. The ransom note appears. At this point, the business faces an immediate operational crisis: nothing works.

Stage 4: The death spiral. This is where most businesses that eventually close begin to fail. The cost of downtime accumulates daily. Revenue stops. Staff cannot work. Customers and suppliers lose confidence. Legal and regulatory obligations — including a 72-hour GDPR notification requirement to the Data Protection Commission — add pressure. Recovery costs mount. And the ransom itself, if paid, offers no guarantee of data recovery.

---

Thirteen Businesses That Did Not Survive

The following cases are documented closures where a cyberattack was the primary or critical secondary cause of permanent cessation of operations.

These are not edge cases. They span healthcare, logistics, education, finance, technology, and hospitality. They range from a two-physician practice to a century-old transport group. The common thread is not industry or size — it is unpreparedness.

---

Free Resource: Download The Irish SME Cyber Survival Guide — 10 controls based on NCSC Ireland & ENISA guidance. Plain English, no jargon.

---

The Five Patterns That Predict Closure

Analysing these cases reveals five specific failure conditions. If any of these apply to your business today, you are in a high-risk category.

1. Backups Connected to the Network

Wood Ranch Medical had backups. They were useless because they were connected to the same network as everything else. When the ransomware ran, it encrypted the backups too.

The standard for resilient backups is the 3-2-1-1-0 rule: three copies of data, on two different media types, with one copy off-site, one copy air-gapped (completely disconnected from any network), and zero errors verified through regular testing. If your backups are on a network-attached drive or a cloud service that is always connected, they are not safe from ransomware.

The critical point that most businesses miss: having a backup is not the same as having a tested backup. A backup you have never restored from is a backup you cannot rely on. Business continuity planning must include regular, documented restoration tests.

2. Single-Factor Authentication on Remote Access

KNP Logistics — a 158-year-old company — was destroyed because an attacker guessed one employee's password. No second factor. No alert. No barrier. Once inside, the attacker moved freely through the entire network.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on all remote access points — VPN, email, cloud applications, remote desktop — is the single most effective technical control available to an Irish SME. It does not require a large budget. Microsoft 365 Business Basic includes MFA at no additional cost. Our guide to implementing MFA across your business covers the practical steps.

3. No Incident Response Plan

The Heritage Company, Brookside ENT, and St. Margaret's Health all shared a common failure: when the attack hit, no one knew what to do. Days were lost trying to identify who to call, what to preserve, and how to communicate with customers and staff. Every day of confusion is a day of lost revenue and mounting costs.

An incident response plan does not need to be a 50-page document. It needs to answer five questions before an attack happens: Who do we call? What do we shut down first? Who communicates with customers? What are our GDPR obligations? How do we keep operating in the meantime? Having answers ready reduces recovery time from weeks to days.

4. No Cyber Insurance — or the Wrong Cyber Insurance

TravelEx paid a €2.3m ransom and still collapsed. Stoli Group had cyber insurance and still filed for bankruptcy. Insurance alone is not a survival strategy — but the absence of it removes a critical financial buffer.

More importantly, many Irish SMEs who think they have cyber insurance discover at the point of claim that their policy excludes the specific type of attack they suffered, or that they failed to meet the security requirements written into the policy small print. Understanding what your insurer actually requires before an attack — not after — is essential. See also our guide on whether your insurer will pay the ransom and how to document an incident for maximum recovery.

5. Untrained Staff

Ninety per cent of cyberattacks begin with a human error. A phishing email opened. A password reused. A suspicious link clicked because it looked legitimate. The most sophisticated technical defences in the world cannot compensate for a workforce that has never been taught to recognise an attack.

Employee cybersecurity training is not a one-time event. It requires regular, practical exercises — including phishing simulations — to build the instincts that protect your business. The psychology of why smart people click bad links is well-documented: attackers exploit urgency, authority, and familiarity. Understanding these mechanisms is the first line of defence.

---

A Warning About "Recovery Companies"

One finding from the research deserves special attention. Following a ransomware attack, a number of businesses were approached by companies claiming to be able to recover encrypted data without paying the ransom, using "proprietary technology" or "quantum computing."

Evidence from the testimony of a REvil affiliate reveals that some of these companies are fraudulent intermediaries who secretly pay the ransom to the attackers and then bill the victim — or their insurer — for two to three times the actual ransom amount. For a cash-strapped business already in crisis, this double-dealing can drain the remaining capital that might otherwise have funded recovery.

If you are ever approached by an unsolicited "data recovery" company following an attack, treat it with extreme caution. Engage only with firms recommended by your cyber insurer, NCSC Ireland, or a trusted advisor. Your insurer's incident response panel is the safest starting point.

---

The Predictive Metrics: Are You in the High-Risk Category?

Research on these closures identifies five specific conditions that significantly increase the probability of business failure following an attack:

If two or more of these conditions apply to your business today, a structured security review is not a luxury — it is an urgent business priority.

---

What Survival Looks Like: The Five Non-Negotiables

The businesses that survived ransomware attacks — and there are many — share a common characteristic: they had invested in resilience before the attack, not after. Survival is not about having perfect security. It is about being able to keep operating while the attack is being remediated.

1. Immutable, air-gapped backups — tested regularly, stored off-site, completely isolated from the network. See our 3-2-1-1-0 backup guide.

2. MFA on every remote access point — email, VPN, cloud applications, remote desktop. No exceptions. See MFA Everywhere.

3. A written incident response plan — with named contacts, clear roles, and pre-agreed relationships with an incident response provider and legal counsel. See our incident response template.

4. Cyber insurance that matches your actual risk — reviewed annually, with security controls that meet the policy requirements. See what insurers look for.

5. Regular staff training and phishing simulations — because the human is always the first target. See employee cybersecurity training.

None of these require a large IT team or an enterprise budget. They require deliberate action and, in most cases, a clear plan. A virtual CISO (vCISO) can help an Irish SME build and implement all five of these controls at a fraction of the cost of a full-time security hire.

---

The Irish Context: This Is Not a Foreign Problem

It is tempting to read these case studies — a hospital in Illinois, a logistics firm in the UK, a psychotherapy provider in Finland — and conclude that this is someone else's problem. It is not.

The HSE ransomware attack of 2021 cost the Irish state an estimated €100 million to remediate. It disrupted cancer screening, delayed surgeries, and exposed the personal health data of hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens. The attackers were not targeting Ireland specifically — they were targeting a large organisation with known vulnerabilities, and the HSE happened to fit the profile.

Your business fits a different profile: smaller, less resourced, and therefore, in many ways, more attractive. Ransomware groups use automated scanning tools to identify vulnerable systems across the internet. They are not reading your website and deciding to target you. They are running scripts that find open ports, unpatched systems, and weak credentials — and your business address is irrelevant to that process.

The NCSC Ireland publishes regular advisories on active threats targeting Irish businesses. The NIS2 Directive, now transposed into Irish law, places legal obligations on a broad range of businesses to implement specific security controls and report incidents within 24 hours. Non-compliance carries significant financial penalties. See our NIS2 compliance checklist for Irish SMEs to understand whether your business is in scope.

---

Related Reading

• Ransomware Response Playbook: Should You Pay the Ransom?
• Backup Strategy for SMEs: The 3-2-1-1-0 Rule Explained
• Building an Incident Response Plan: A Template for Irish SMEs
• Business Continuity Planning for Cyber Incidents: Beyond Backup and Recovery
• Demystifying Cyber Insurance: What Irish SMEs Need to Know Before Buying

---

Ready to Assess Your Risk?

The businesses in this article did not close because they were careless or negligent. Most of them were doing what they thought was right. They had backups — but not air-gapped ones. They had passwords — but not MFA. They had IT support — but no incident response plan.

The difference between survival and closure is often a small number of specific, practical controls that were never put in place.

Book a free 20-minute strategy call with our vCISO team. We work with small and medium businesses across Ireland — including Donegal, the North West, and beyond. We will give you an honest assessment of your current risk posture and a prioritised list of the actions that will make the most difference.

No jargon. No scare tactics. Just clear, actionable advice from people who understand the Irish business environment.

Book Your Free Strategy Call

---

Sources: NCSC Ireland{:target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"} · Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report{:target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"} · Coveware Ransomware Marketplace Report{:target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"} · Case studies sourced from documented public records, court filings, and contemporaneous news reporting._

---

Take the Next Step

If ransomware risk and how to protect your business is something you're thinking about, the best starting point is a structured conversation.

Book a free 20-minute call with our vCISO team. We work with Irish SMEs across every sector — no jargon, no scare tactics, just clear advice on what to do next.

Book Your Free 20-Minute Call →