When ransomware hits, the first question from the board is rarely “who did this?” It is “when are we back online?” Containment and forensics matter, but the business damage piles up every hour that payroll, order systems, EHRs or production lines stay dark. That is the gap ransomware recovery firms fill: they rebuild servers, handle data restoration from whatever survived, recover encrypted files where possible and, when there is no other route, handle communication with the attackers.
Attack crews now use automation and AI tooling to move from initial access to encryption faster than before, and they increasingly target backup consoles and hypervisors first. That makes recovery harder and slower for teams that have never practiced it. A general incident response retainer is a good start, and our list of top incident response companies covers that broader market. The firms below are different: each one puts restoration, decryption or negotiation at the center of the engagement rather than treating it as an afterthought once the investigation ends.
We selected these ten ransomware recovery companies based on what they publicly offer for restoration, decryption and negotiation, how they work with counsel and insurers, and who they are best suited to. If you are in the middle of an attack right now, read our step-by-step guide to handling a ransomware attack alongside this list.
Ransomware Recovery Companies At A Glance
Company
Headquarters
Best For
Core Services
Coveware by Veeam
Westport, USA
Extortion cases where payment or decryption is on the table
Incident response, tactical negotiation, remediation and recovery
Alvaka
Irvine, USA
Mid-sized businesses and public bodies that need hands-on rebuild help
Containment, evidence preservation, system restoration, hardening
Ontrack
Eden Prairie, USA
Recovering data from damaged backups and encrypted storage
Data recovery, backup repair, decryption research
Halcyon
Austin, USA
Organizations that want recovery built into prevention tooling
Anti-ransomware platform, key capture, decryption, recovery service
Best Ransomware Recovery Companies For 2027
1. Coveware by Veeam — Ransomware Negotiation, Decryption And Recovery Assessment
Coveware specializes in cyber extortion. Its process runs from assessment through negotiation and settlement to ending downtime, and it starts by identifying the ransomware strain and laying out the realistic recovery options, including the expected percentage of data that can be recovered and the likely downtime for each route. Coveware uses its own decryption tooling and produces documentation that supports insurance claims and compliance reporting. The firm is now part of Veeam, the backup vendor, which gives it close knowledge of how backups fail during attacks.
What stands out is transparency on the money side. When paying becomes unavoidable, Coveware negotiates on the client’s behalf around the clock and says it adds no hidden fees or markups to settlements. Retainer clients get a named Coveware expert, training for internal teams and tailored exercises that test decision-making before a real incident. It is best for organizations, and the counsel and carriers behind them, who need a specialist to judge whether data can be recovered without paying and to manage the threat actor conversation if not.
2. Arete — EDR-Led Containment With A Defined Restoration Track
Arete is an incident response firm with its global headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, and an APAC headquarters in Hyderabad. Its restoration service follows four stages: engage, assess and plan, contain and secure, then restore. During containment Arete deploys SentinelOne EDR across servers and endpoints, with a target of completing that step within 72 hours, and its restoration engineers then prioritize critical servers with the aim of returning them to service in about a week.
Arete is a strong fit for insured organizations because its process is built around the people who pay for and oversee the response. Clients, counsel and insurance carriers receive daily status updates, and the core team includes an incident response lead and a project manager. Arete also offers ransom negotiation, but only when payment is the sole remaining option and always within sanctions rules. The restoration engineers are infrastructure specialists who work alongside the forensic responders, which avoids the hand-off delay common when recovery is outsourced.
3. MOXFIVE — Single Technical Advisor Coordinating Recovery Workstreams
MOXFIVE, founded in 2019 and based in Tysons, Virginia, describes itself as a specialized technical advisory firm. Instead of handing a victim a long list of vendors, it assigns a single Technical Advisor who coordinates every technical need during the attack. Behind that advisor sits an incident management platform and a curated partner ecosystem of products and specialist providers that MOXFIVE helps clients procure and put to work. The firm added its own digital forensics and incident response services to that platform, so investigation and recovery can run under one plan.
This model suits organizations that find ransomware recovery overwhelming because it involves forensics, rebuild engineers, backup specialists, legal and communications all at once. The advisor translates technical problems for executives and counsel, and keeps the recovery workstreams moving in parallel. After the incident, MOXFIVE’s Business Resilience service looks at the gaps that let the attack succeed and helps build a more resilient environment, which is useful when an insurer or board wants evidence that things have changed.
4. Fenix24 — Breach Recovery Specialist With Follow-On Hardening
Fenix24 is a breach recovery firm based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and operating under the Conversant Group legal entity. Its core offering is ransomware rapid response, remediation and recovery, with the stated aim of restoring operations quickly and leaving systems more secure than they were before the attack. Its recovery playbook relies on pre-assigned roles, communication protocols and sequencing, with legal, forensic, IT and security experts working together from the start of the incident.
The practical advantage is what happens after the recovery. Fenix24 sits alongside sister services: Athena7 for security assessments, strategy and planning, Grypho5 for ongoing security-focused management, and Argos99, a SaaS platform for asset discovery, dependency mapping and risk prioritization. The firm is outspoken that properly configured immutable backups are an organization’s most important security control. That makes it a good choice for larger environments that expect to rebuild infrastructure, not just restore files, and want the same team to harden it afterward.
5. CYPFER — In-House Ransomware Recovery With Threat Actor Communications
CYPFER was founded in 2019 in Toronto and describes itself as focused on ransomware post-breach remediation and cyber attack first response. Its service lineup separates ransomware recovery from ransomware advisory, and it runs a dedicated threat actor communications service called CYCOMMS. Restoration can be delivered on site or remotely, and support runs 24/7. The firm has offices in Toronto, Miami, London, Utrecht, the Cayman Islands, Dubai and Mexico City.
The point CYPFER stresses most is that it does not outsource. The same in-house team handles response, communication with attackers and restoration, which reduces the coordination overhead that slows many recoveries. It also handles broader incident response, so engineers working on the rebuild understand how the intrusion happened. CYPFER is a good fit for organizations with operations across North America, Europe, the Caribbean or the Middle East that want one firm with regional offices rather than a different provider in each country.
6. Surefire Cyber — In-House Negotiation And Restoration On One Platform
Surefire Cyber is a younger response firm, founded in 2022 and based in Elkridge, Maryland, with a largely remote team. It handles ransomware, business email compromise, malware and data theft, and promotes end-to-end coverage so that clients can prepare, respond and recover with one provider. Restoration and threat actor communication and negotiation are both listed as in-house capabilities rather than referrals.
Surefire is a good match for mid-market organizations that want a responsive team without the layers of a very large consultancy. Because negotiation and restoration sit with the same people doing the investigation, decisions about whether to pay, what to rebuild first and which backups can be trusted are made with full context. Buyers should ask about current retainer options and which insurance panels the firm sits on, since those details affect how quickly it can be engaged under a policy.
7. Sygnia — Tactical Negotiation Paired With Remediation And Recovery
Sygnia is an incident response and security consulting firm based in Tel Aviv, founded by veterans of Israeli military intelligence units and later backed by Temasek. Its incident response service includes tactical negotiation, where experienced negotiators engage attackers to buy time and gather information, and a remediation and recovery workstream that begins immediately rather than after the investigation is complete. The firm has handled real-time responses to ransomware attacks against large networks.
Sygnia is best suited to enterprises dealing with skilled, persistent attackers where getting the eviction wrong means being encrypted again a week later. Its negotiation approach treats the threat actor conversation as an intelligence source rather than just a payment channel, which helps the recovery team decide what is safe to bring back online. Organizations in financial services, critical infrastructure and large multinationals tend to get the most from this level of engagement.
8. Alvaka — Hands-On Ransomware Rebuild For Mid-Sized Networks
Alvaka is an IT services and security firm in Irvine, California, with a dedicated rapid ransomware recovery practice. Its recovery service covers four jobs: containing active threats and removing attackers from the environment, collecting and preserving forensic evidence, restoring encrypted systems, and hardening the network against the next attempt. Alvaka also works with restoration partners and publishes a ransomware recovery cost calculator that helps leadership estimate the scale of the problem early.
Alvaka suits mid-sized businesses, local government and other organizations that do not have a large internal infrastructure team to rebuild servers and Active Directory themselves. Because the same engagement covers eviction, evidence and rebuild, there is less risk of restoring systems before the attacker is fully out. Ask how they split work with your forensic firm if your insurer appoints one separately.
9. Ontrack — Data Recovery From Damaged Backups And Encrypted Storage
Ontrack, operated by KLDiscovery Ontrack from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is a data recovery specialist rather than an incident response firm, and that is exactly why it belongs here. Its ransomware service recovers data from almost any operating system or file system, including NetApp WAFL, ZFS and SAN volumes, virtual disks, LUNs and datastores. It also rebuilds backups that attackers have deleted or damaged, including Veeam, Commvault, TSM, Networker and Acronis backup sets, even when the catalog is missing.
Ontrack states that it does not buy decryption keys. It looks for available keys or technical workarounds with its own tools, and builds custom recovery tools for unusual infrastructure. Service runs at emergency, priority or standard levels, and the initial consultation is free. Ontrack is the right call when the incident response team has done its job but the backups are corrupt, the deduplication store is broken or a critical database needs repair before anything can be restored.
10. Halcyon — Encryption Key Capture And Decryption Without Negotiating
Halcyon, headquartered in Austin, Texas, takes a different route to ransomware recovery. Its anti-ransomware platform captures the key material attackers use during encryption, so encrypted files can be decrypted without relying on backups and without negotiating with the attacker. Every deployment includes Halcyon’s Ransomware Detection and Recovery service, run by its RISE team, which investigates suspicious behavior, interrupts active attacks and handles recovery if data is encrypted.
Halcyon also runs a 24/7 Ransomware Operations Center and offers an Emergency Ransomware Recovery service, delivered with incident response partners, for organizations that are under attack before the platform is deployed. A ransomware warranty is available for fully protected customers. Halcyon is best for organizations that want recovery capability in place before an attack, as a layer alongside EDR and immutable backups, rather than calling a firm after the damage is done.
How To Choose A Ransomware Recovery Company
The best time to choose a recovery firm is before you need one. These questions help separate firms that restore operations from firms that mainly investigate.
Is This A Recovery Firm Or A General Incident Response Firm?
Incident response firms focus on scoping, containment, root cause and evidence. Recovery firms focus on bringing systems back: rebuilding domain controllers, restoring virtual machines, repairing databases and validating that restored systems are clean. Many firms do both, but ask who actually performs the rebuild. If the answer is “a partner,” find out who that partner is and how hand-offs work. A broader view of the response market is in our guide to data breach response plans.
Are They On My Cyber Insurer’s Panel?
Most cyber policies require you to use pre-approved vendors, or at least get carrier consent before engaging one. Check your policy now and confirm whether your preferred firm is on the panel. Firms that already report daily to carriers and counsel tend to keep claims moving with less friction.
How Do They Handle Negotiation And Payment?
Ask whether the firm negotiates in-house, how it screens threat actors against sanctions lists, and how it charges for settlement work. Good firms will tell you plainly when decryption or backup recovery makes payment unnecessary, and will document their reasoning for your insurer and regulators.
What Happens When Backups Are Damaged?
Attackers routinely target backup servers first. Ask whether the firm can repair broken backup catalogs, recover partially encrypted files or work with data recovery specialists. This is where a firm like Ontrack or a decryption specialist can change the outcome.
Will They Leave Us Stronger Than Before?
Restoring the same weak environment invites a second attack. Ask what hardening is included, whether the firm deploys EDR during recovery, and whether it offers follow-up assessments or ongoing monitoring. Pairing recovery with a managed detection and response provider closes the gap after the engagement ends.
Conclusion
Ransomware recovery is its own discipline. Coveware and Sygnia bring deep negotiation and decryption experience, Arete, CYPFER, Surefire Cyber and Alvaka pair response with hands-on restoration, MOXFIVE coordinates the many moving parts, Fenix24 rebuilds and hardens large environments, Ontrack rescues data from broken storage and backups, and Halcyon builds recovery into prevention. Shortlist two or three firms now, confirm they work with your insurer, and agree on terms before an attack forces the decision under pressure.
