Eric Geller reports:
The Biden administration and dozens of foreign allies will pledge this week never to pay ransoms to hackers who lock up their national governments’ computer systems, hoping to discourage financially motivated cyber criminals from seeing those systems as attractive ransomware targets.
The joint promise will occur as part of the third annual meeting of the International Counter-Ransomware Initiative, which includes 48 countries, the European Union and Interpol, the European police agency. Members are convening Wednesday and Thursday in Washington to approve new activities meant to make ransomware less profitable and therefore less prevalent.
Read more at The Messenger.
And if you’re skeptical about whether this will really happen and if it does, whether it will really work, you’re not alone. Consider this:
“Data provided to the U.S. government by ransomware negotiators shows that companies with good backups are able to recover “far more quickly” than companies that pay a ransom, according to the senior administration official.” So when they don’t have a good backup and have pledged not to pay, what exactly is going to happen next?
And if this does work, does that just shift the threat actors over even more to softer targets like, say, healthcare and education entities?