White House seeks global efforts to tackle ransomware

The White House this week facilitated an international counter-ransomware virtual event with over 30 countries and the EU, with the goal of accelerating cooperation to counter ransomware.

The meetings targeted improving network resilience, addressing the financial systems that make ransomware profitable, disrupting the ransomware ecosystem via law enforcement collaboration, and leveraging the tools of diplomacy to address safe harbors and improve partner capacity.

"The big takeaway: It takes a network to fight a network", Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser to President Byden on cyber threats, told reporters on Friday.

"This meeting was really about a global community bringing together government experts for a frank exchange of where counter-ransomware cooperation is working, where it can be improved, and what tools and best practices exist to achieve that shared goal," Neuberger said during a virtual press briefing organized by the State Department's Foreign Press Center.

In their joint statement, the participating governments called ransomware “an escalating global security threat with serious economic and security consequences.”

The organizers did not extend a summit invitation to the countries in the South Caucasus – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia – which are surrounded by malign actors in the region such as Russia and Iran.

Answering to TURAN's Washington correspondent's question on this matter, Neuberger said, Washington marks this week's event as "the first of what may be numerous meetings to bring countries together."

"[A]t some point there’s just always an inverse relationship between the number of countries, the number of anything you bring together, and achieving practical outcomes....  And clearly, we will reach out to additional countries to join us in this effort because, as you said, global – ransomware is a global problem.  But this is not the last meeting, clearly, to counter ransomware from a global perspective."

Russia, where many of the most aggressive ransomware gangs are based, wasn't a part of this week's event either.

Neuberger explained that Washington and Moscow are "already having active discussions” about ransomware through a dedicated working group, and that the U.S. has shared specific information regarding ransomware criminals operating from within Russia and is looking to see follow-on action to address that threat.

"We believe that responsible countries address ransomware activity coming within their borders," she added.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.