Ciaran Martin, the security specialist who led the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) until August 2020, has claimed that insurance companies are paying back to victims who were targeted by a ransomware attack and paid a ransom to free up their data.
As there is no legal barrier to curtail companies from paying ransoms, the security chief says that the situation is going out of control and could show adverse effects on critical infrastructure like the NHS systems.
Typically, the crime that is been nourished by cyber crooks from Russia and Soviet Union is getting an encouragement from insurance companies are they are seen making huge amounts from just a few digital attacks and then retiring- such as the one witnessed with Wizard Spider or RYUK that made nearly $150m so far by exfiltrating data from companies such as Travelex, Garmin and such
So, the former intelligence chief says that a law is needed urgently to curb ransom payments that are being made to hackers, similar to the one paid to the terrorists.
Mr. Martin added such attacks are now claiming lives that could be serious, referring to the incident where a German woman lost her life because of a cyber attack on a hospital in Dusseldorf.
Taking data backups at regular intervals, deploying threat monitoring solutions in place, and keeping the hardware and software updated with the required security fixes will best eliminate such threats from bug claims Ciaran Martin.
