Suppose you were just notified that your company has experienced a major data breach. You’ve lost customer records, including usernames, email addresses, passwords, addresses, and phone numbers for all 500,000 of your customers. Estimate the direct costs for notification, detection, escalation, remediation, and legal fees. Suppose the attackers contact you and offer to destroy all records, tell no one about the data breach, and show you how to patch the security hole. The only problem is that they want to be hired as “consultants” and have $600,000 deposited into their European bank account. Would you pay the “consulting” fee? Justify your decision.