In a speech on Wednesday, the U.S. President, Joe Biden told the Russian President, that 16 sectors of critical infrastructure should be “off-limits” to attacks, specifically cyberattacks. Unfortunately, analysts believe his efforts to be futile. Robert Golladay, the EMEA and APAC director at Illusive claims that “the fact that one of the leaders of the free world stood up to discuss Ransomware on a global stage is significative. We are in the middle of a global digital pandemic, with cyberattacks happening on all shores, in all countries, in all sectors. And just as it will take a global effort to control the coronavirus pandemic, a multinational effort is necessary to take on the scourge of these ransomware attacks and prosecuting the criminals behind them.”
The U.S. President was not specific about which areas he believes should be out of bounds, though he was most likely referring to the 16 sectors designated as critical by Homeland Security. These include telecommunications, healthcare, food and energy. In his speech, Biden stated that: “We [the U.S. and Russia] agreed to task experts in both our countries to work on specific understandings about what is off-limits. We’ll find out whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order.”
“Of course, the complexity of stamping out ransomware on a global scale means the idea is likely to remain a pipe dream for a long time,” Golladay elaborates. “As responsible companies, we need to take on the responsibility of putting in place an active defence, which facilitates the early detection of attacks and prevent lateral movement once the attacker is inside. Lateral movement is the hallmark of any advanced attack, and therefore the key to making these attacks unsuccessful. These defensive tools are available, and it’s the responsibility of individual organisations to step up their security measures and protect confidential data.”
