High-profile security vendors and groups have teamed up with the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) to form the Ransomware Task Force (RTF), which plans to present some actionable legal, technical, and policy ideas to the new Biden administration by early spring.
The task force was officially announced on Monday with 17 founding organizations, including McAfee, Microsoft, and Rapid7, as well as cyber advocacy groups such as the Cyber Threat Alliance and the Global Cyber Alliance.
Philip Reiner, CEO of IST, which will head up the effort, anticipates the group will expand as word gets out and more companies and organizations join. Working groups will form after the first of the year, he says, and the task force will do much of its investigatory work in January and February.
"We intend to work quickly," Reiner says. "We're looking to pool our resources and point out to people where they can get information about ransomware, plus have some clear ideas we can present in the form of new laws and funding required to combat ransomware."
There's little question that ransomware has had a powerful economic impact in the past year. Ransomware damages hit $11.5 billion in 2019 and are expected to be even higher for 2020 as Maze, Sodinokibi, Ryuk, Dharma, and many other strains hit especially hard.
Now's the Time The time has come for the industry to work on the ransomware issue, especially as the attacks have not stopped and security teams were hit with the microsoft mcafee rapid7 others ransomware force
