Star Trek—yes, the original from the late 1960s with William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy (RIP) as Commander Spock. Iconic. It captivated audiences as it was one of the first television shows to fully air in color by a major network and was so science-fiction-centric and futuristic that people didn’t know what to think at first but were fascinated, nonetheless. That spawned decades of franchise television shows and movies for multiple generations to enjoy as it moved to cult classic status.

When you look at ransomware in the cybersecurity realm, it followed a similar path in many ways. It was one of the first cybersecurity threats ever detected—the first case being in 1989 with the AIDS Trojan—long before the internet was even a thing and when computers were the size of small desks. In that instance, a Harvard biologist sent 20,000 infected floppy disks out to attendees of the World Health Organization’s International AIDS Conference, which prompted users to send $189 to a PO Box in Panama. While the idea fizzled out, it did set forth the idea that is now known as ransomware.