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GOVERNMENT, INDUSTRY EFFORTS TO THWART RANSOMWARE SLOWLY START TO PAY OFF

Public-private collaboration, law enforcement, and better defenses are helping
make inroads in the war against ransomware, according to the Ransomware Task
Force.
Nate Nelson
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
May 08, 2023
Source: Wavebreakmedia Ltd IFE via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


It may seem counterintuitive given its regularity of ransomware attacks today,
but these debilitating cyberattacks actually declined for the first time ever in
2022, thanks to actions and policy changes implemented by enterprises and
governments in countries around the world.



This bit of good news comes courtesy of the Ransomware Task Force (RTF), an
industry group founded by the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) during
the height of the COVID-19-onset rise in ransomware. In its May 2023 progress
report, RTF announced that of its 48 recommendations for how society could fight
back against the scourge of ransomware, a full 92% have already been addressed
in one way or another.

The results of this progress are already showing up in the data and being felt
on the ground.

"I think it's reasonable to compare ransomware to COVID," says Curt Franklin,
principal analyst for enterprise security management at Omdia. "We're past the
epidemic and into the endemic. It is not the constant in your face. Now it's
just part of the everyday cybercrime background that we all deal with."



Still, ransomware attacks continue. New threat actors are still cropping up
every week, getting better at what they do and always evolving their tactics and
technologies to circumvent our best defenses. Major, multimillion-dollar attacks
— the likes of which would've seemed extreme even just a couple of years ago —
continue to befall both enterprises and government targets. Just last week, for
instance, the Sheriff's Department in San Bernardino, California admitted to
paying off a ransom of $1.1 million.

RTF was founded in Dec. 2020, bringing together dozens of leaders from
organizations as far and wide as Microsoft, Bank of America, Mandiant, the US
Department of Justice, and Europol. In April 2021 the group released its
inaugural report, centered around "a comprehensive framework of actions (48 in
total) that government and industry leaders can pursue to significantly disrupt
the ransomware business model and mitigate the impact of these attacks in the
immediate and longer terms."

It would've been easy to lose track of all those actions or ignore them
entirely. Instead, "two years later, we have seen impressive moves by industry,
US, and partner governments toward implementing these recommendations," the
authors of the newest report wrote.



By now, 44 of the RTF's 48 recommendations "have seen some action." 24 of those
"have seen significant progress" since April 2021, with "preliminary actions"
taken to address 20 more. "Only 4 recommendations have had no publicly known
action," the new report stated.


WHO'S DOING WHAT

Among the myriad ways governments, enterprises, and individuals have stepped up
to the plate, "each has had an important impact," Franklin says.

"The government," he points out, "is doing things like providing forums in which
security professionals could gather and share information. Government has also
played a role in enforcement, which changes the calculation that the
cybercriminals have to do, to see whether ransomware is a worthwhile investment
in their time and resources."

Even the way governments talk about ransomware has been important. RTF co-chair
Megan Stifel points to the Colonial Pipeline attack as a watershed moment in
ransomware policy. "The United States government was very overt in its
messaging, signaling that ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure was not
something that it will continue to tolerate. And that signaling carries on to
this day, in its cybersecurity strategy."

Meanwhile, private industry has played its role. "Organizations have gotten
better about their own hygiene," Stifel assesses. "Organizations have changed
their responses to ransomware incidents," including paying their attackers far
less often — only 37% of the time in Q4 2022, as compared with 85% of the time
in Q1 2019, according to Coveware.


DIPS IN RANSOMWARE

All these advancements have already borne fruit. In its May report, RTF noted
2022 data from CrowdStrike — indicating that ransomware was down 20% in data
theft and extortion attacks — and Chainalysis — that the average lifespan of a
ransomware strain plummeted to 70 days, from 153 in 2021 and 265 in 2020.

"My number one priority is to advance the scale, scope, and extent of
operational collaboration," Stifel says. "We need to be better, quicker, and
faster — and harsher, in some ways — at working between the government and
private sector in operational collaboration, where we are closely integrated
while also respecting privacy and civil liberties in leading these
investigations and showing that a rule of law based approach to combating this
type of cybersecurity risk ransomware is a successful one."

For as much effort as it took to stem ransomware the first time, even more will
be required to keep it down and address the next threat that crops up in its
place.

"Ransomware eventually, hopefully, will start to decline, but there will be
something next," Stifel warns. "And so we need to get better at operational
collaboration, not just to defeat ransomware, but to ensure a more sustainable
and secure ecosystem."

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