Can 'ransom' mean the sum paid for a normal service rather than the sum paid for setting free someone held hostage?

Question

I just came across an article where ransom seems to be used to mean the fee paid for a service, whereas previously I have only seen it being used in the context of someone being held prisoner.

Here,

The managing director, who does not wish to be identified publicly, physically pulled the plug on the computer and called in the IT services supplier. Rather than pay a ransom, the company decided to reboot from its backup.
— ComputerWeekly.com, The True Cost of A Cyber Security Breach in Australia

The article tells about a company who suffered a security breach. Then the company calls the IT supplier but elects, instead of paying them(the IT supplier) to fix the problem, to fix it themselves.

So it appears that ransom is being used to mean the fee the IT supplier was trying to charge, rather than a sum to be paid as if their data was being held hostage by those who performed the attack.

What is going on here? Is this correct English?

Answer 1

I agree that the article is poorly laid out to the point where you may think that the IT supplier is the one asking for the ransom, but that was not what it was actually trying to say. Your understanding of the word ransom is correct, and the article uses it in that sense, except that it is talking about data instead of a person:

rogue code was working alphabetically through the business’s files, locking each one as it went.

I presume here that the author uses "lock" to mean "encrypt", so the file is well and truly unusable to normal people, but it is still recoverable if the decryption key is provided.

The implication is that the company could have chosen to pay a fee to the creator of the rogue code in order to receive the decryption key. This would be the "ransom" they paid to "release their hostage data".

(Instead, they restored from backups which turned out to be grossly out-of-date due to the incompetence of their IT provider.)

See definitions of ransomware on wikipedia or Trend Micro:

a type of malware that restricts access to a computer system that it infects in some way, and demands that the user pay a ransom to the operators of the malware to remove the restriction.

Answer 2

Your previous idea of ransom was correct. Ransom refers to the practice of holding a person or item prisoner until a price is paid. In this case, the author uses the word ransom to show that the IT supplier is holding the data on the computer hostage until the price of fixing the computer is paid. In the author's opinion the IT supplier is acting dishonestly.