Ransomware incidents have increased dramatically over the past few years. Security professionals need to understand the actors behind ransomware threats, how they operate. Organized partnerships between ransomware operators and affiliates help execute cybercrimes at scale and for maximum payout. Security teams can seek shelter by tapping into threat intelligence to understand actors and the dark web, authors say. The nature of the operator-affiliate relationship also keeps evolving, making malicious actors that much harder to trace, they say. Security teams need to conduct post mortems on malicious files left behind by ransomware operators.”]