Séminaire GREDEG : Alfredo Minerva (University of Bologna)

This paper investigates the impact of ransomware attacks on firms’ financial health, with a particular emphasis on liquidity. We combine a dataset of ransomware incidents with balance-sheet information for more than two million European firms and estimate treatment effects using a doubly robust difference-in-differences approach. Our results show that ransomware attacks lead to a statistically significant deterioration in liquidity ratios, consistent with immediate cash outflows for ransom payments, recovery expenses, and delayed insurance reimbursements. These findings underscore that ransomware primarily strains firms’ liquid resources, highlighting the vulnerability of corporate cash buffers to cyber shocks.

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