Proposed regulations in the UK aim to ban public bodies and critical infrastructure operators from paying ransomware. Other businesses would need to disclose payment decisions. The government hopes these measures will mitigate ransomware attacks. However, there are concerns regarding the effectiveness of the ban. Critics suggest it might unfairly penalize victims. Ransomware has been shown to inflict significant economic damage, costing UK businesses an estimated £64 billion annually, including direct payments and ancillary expenses, reinforcing the need for effective cybersecurity strategies.
You can see why ransomware is such a lucrative operation for these threat groups, because for some businesses, there's very little argument. You know, 'okay, we plan for this, here's the cash, can we have our data back?'. It's a pretty seamless operation.
There's been a mixed response from the cybersecurity industry. So some have praised it as a bit of a no brainer, others have warned that it really doesn't do very much to defend businesses, as we've been discussing. Jonathan Wright, who is a partner in the UK Data privacy and cybersecurity practice at Hunton, Andrews Kurth LLP law firm, said that the ban risks punishing the victims.
We are always covering cases of ransomware causing serious damage to businesses and we recently, in fact, published a piece that said that cyber attacks cost UK businesses alone £64 billion a year. That's including ransom payments, but also staff overtime, lost business and all the other associated costs. So it's clear that it has a major impact on the economy.
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