“You don’t take a career test and they say, ‘Oh, you’d be good at negotiating ransomware,'” says Karen Sprenger, COO and Chief Ransomware Negotiator for LMG Security in Missoula, Montana.

Sprenger says her love of mysteries, especially Sherlock Holmes, and passion for technology led her to start working as a cybersecurity incident responder nearly a decade ago.

“[I realized] there is a whole branch of technology that you can go in and investigate and determine what happened based on clues that the attacker leaves behind,” she says. “I just loved that ability to go in and and recreate an event like Sherlock Holmes could.”

Sprenger’s first ransomware negotiation five years ago was a total accident. She was helping a client who had just been attacked with ransomware, and they asked her to negotiate with the attackers.

Even as the COO of a cybersecurity firm, Sprenger had no formal training in negotiating with criminals.

Instead, she looked to the same mysteries, crime novels and movies that got her interested in cybersecurity in the first place.  

One of the most helpful movies was a 2000 film called Proof of Life, starring Meg Ryan as a woman whose husband has been kidnapped and Russell Crowe as the negotiator she hires to bring him home.

Among other lessons, Sprenger says Crowe’s character taught her the importance of keeping her emotions out of a negotiation.

Over the course of more than 100 ransomware negotiations in the last 5 years — including more than 30 involving health care — Sprenger has learned that cybercriminals often see themselves as legitimate businesspeople, striving to offer quality “customer service.” 

“It’s very much like any website you go to that pops up and says, ‘Hi, how can I help you?’ That’s what you’re looking at,” she says. “They’re there, 24/7, ready to chat and answer your questions.”

To hear Sprenger describe a recent ransomware negotiation she conducted for a health care clinic in the Midwest, listen to the full episode by clicking on the player at the top of the page.