Ransomware is a subset of malware that encrypts critical data on the victim’s system, followed by a demand for ransom. These attacks are one of the most pervasive cyber crime threats to organizations throughout the world. Over time, the increasing frequency of ransomware attacks has piqued the interest of academics in their study. Researchers are continually striving to prevent ransomware infections and victimization. Despite expansive research focused on popular ransomware families, less commonly labeled variants remain under explored, becoming flag bearers of a hidden yet critical facet of the threat spectrum. Many prescribed solutions lack scalability and robustness and are not generalized. This paper restricts itself to presenting a systematic survey of ransomware detection mechanisms. This paper focuses on: (1) summarizing current challenges related to ransomware detection and (2) presenting an overview of the current approaches. (3) discussing the important features of classification (4) comparing existing works with their counterparts against different features while exploring their structure (5) tools used for ransomware detection and data acquisition are discussed.