( TNS ) — Last month , employees at the Colorado Department of Transportation were greeted by a message on their computer screens similar to this : “ All your files are encrypted with RSA-2048 encryption . … It ’ s not possible to recover your files without private key . … You must send Attack.Ransom us 0.7 BitCoin for each affected PC or 3 BitCoins to receive ALL Private Keys for ALL affected PC ’ s. ” CDOT isn’t paying Attack.Ransom , but others have . In fact , so-called ransomware has become one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises in the U.S. and internationally , with the FBI estimating total payments Attack.Ransom are nearing $ 1 billion . Hackers use ransomware to encrypt computer files , making them unreadable without a secret key , and then demand digital currency Attack.Ransom like bitcoin if victims want the files back — and many victims are falling for that promise . Ransomware infects more than 100,000 computers around the world every day and payments Attack.Ransom are approaching $ 1 billion , said U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein during the October 2017 Cambridge Cyber Summit , citing FBI statistics . A study by researchers at Google , Chainalysis , University of California San Diego and NYU Tandon School of Engineering estimated that from 2016 to mid 2017 , victims paid Attack.Ransom $ 25 million in ransom Attack.Ransom to get files back . And one out of five businesses that do pay the ransom Attack.Ransom don ’ t get their data back , according to 2016 report by Kaspersky Labs . Last spring , the Erie County Medical Center in New York was attacked Attack.Ransom by SamSam due to a misconfigured web server , according to The Buffalo News . Because it had backed up its files , the hospital decided not to pay Attack.Ransom the estimated $ 44,000 ransom Attack.Ransom . It took six weeks to get back to normal at a recovery cost of nearly $ 10 million . More recently in January , the new SamSam variant sneaked Attack.Ransom into Indiana hospital Hancock Health , which decided to pay Attack.Ransom 4 bitcoin , or about $ 55,000 , in ransom Attack.Ransom . Attackers gained entry by using a vendor ’ s username and password on a Thursday night . The hospital was back online by Monday morning . Colorado security officials are still investigating the CDOT ransomware attack Attack.Ransom that took 2,000 employee computers offline for more than a week . They don ’ t plan to pay the ransom Attack.Ransom but offered few details about the attack Attack.Ransom other than confirming it was a variant of the SamSam ransomware . Security researchers with Cisco ’ s Talos , which shared the SamSam message with The Denver Post , reported in January that the new SamSam variant had so far collected 30.4 bitcoin , or about $ 325,217 . The reality is that people need to be smarter about computer security . That means patching software , using anti-malware software , and not sharing passwords and accounts . And not opening files , emails or links from unfamiliar sources — and sometimes familiar sources . Webroot doesn ’ t have an official stance on whether to pay a ransom Attack.Ransom to get files back , but Dufour says it ’ s a personal decision . Cybersecurity companies like Webroot can advise whether the hacker has a reputation for restoring files after payment is received Attack.Ransom . “ Paying a ransom Attack.Ransom to a cybercriminal is an incredibly personal decision . It ’ s easy to say not to negotiate with criminals when it ’ s not your family photos or business data that you ’ ll never see again . Unfortunately , if you want your data back , paying the ransom Attack.Ransom is often the only option , ” Dufour said . “ However , it ’ s important to know that there are some strains of ransomware that have coding and encryption errors . For these cases , even paying the ransom Attack.Ransom won ’ t decrypt your data . I recommend checking with a computer security expert before paying any ransom Attack.Ransom . ”