Washington Hosts International Counter Ransomware Summit

Daniel ZimmermannNovember 2, 2022

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On Monday, the White House took on ransomware and other forms of cybercrime by hosting politicians from more than 30 countries and the private sector at the International Counter Ransomware Summit to discuss ways to counter devastating attacks.

The meeting was called “Initiatives to Combat Ransomware” and will last two days.

According to a White House officials, the reason for the meeting was the development of ransomware and its active use, when ransomware has dealt many devastating blows to both the public sector and businesses around the world.

For example, in September, the second-largest public school district in the United States was cyber-attacked, and as a result, about 300,000 of its files were leaked to the Internet as punishment for refusing the attackers’ demands. Hospitals in the US, UK and France have been victims of cybercriminals, and most recently, the largest Australian insurance company, Medibank, suffered from a hacker attack.

Recall that the US authorities also talk about three ransomware attacks on water treatment plants.

This year there will be more participants in the meeting, because in addition to the leaders of the countries, representatives of 13 companies from all over the world will take part in the summit.

This is just the first round of getting to know how private companies see the problem. It’s to make sure we’re not doing it the traditional government-to-government way, but engaging private sector representatives who have a unique vision, capabilities and understanding of the problem of cybercrime.said a White House administration official.

Also, the US administration noted that all participants should be ready to discuss how the government and the private sector can work together to solve a global problem.

The event is attended by Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Siemens, German enterprise software maker SAP, and information security companies Crowdstrike and Mandiant.

Russia has been left out of the White House guest list due to allegations of harboring organizations that distribute ransomware.

The entire conference will be held behind closed doors, with the exception of the public closing session on Tuesday. The first day will be held at FBI Headquarters with the participation of Bureau Director, Christopher Wray. The day will begin with an in-depth briefing on cyber threats from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the US Cyber Security and Infrastructure Protection Agency (CISA), an administration official said. The international team will then meet at the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday.

An administration official said the meeting was divided into five different working groups that would discuss a variety of topics, the rising pace of cyberattacks, attacks on the health sector, and ransomware leaking data online.

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