Despite some calls to ban ransomware payments in hopes that criminals will abandon financially motivated ransomware attacks, finding a way to get everyone to comply with any such ban has seemed challenging, to say the least, and there has been a lot of pushback. Now, one more expert with clout has suggested that the idea will not be productive. As The Record reports:
Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, on Thursday poured cold water on suggestions the United States might bring in a ban on ransomware payments.
“I think within our system in the U.S. — just from a practical perspective — I don’t see it happening,” said Easterly at the Oxford Cyber Forum, an event run by the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative (ECCRI).
She was interviewed by Ciaran Martin, the former head of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, who had earlier this year called for a ban on all ransomware payments in a comment article in The Times newspaper. He acknowledged on stage that the article had “divided opinions, to put it mildly.”
Read more at The Record.