Cybercrime attacks will reportedly cost companies worldwide an astonishing estimate of $10.5 trillion annually by the year 2025, having already incurred a staggering $8.5 trillion cost to the global economy in 2022. While these attacks affect countries all over the globe, the United States alone takes up a 46% share of these attacks recorded this year, making it the worst affected country. With the surge of ransomware attacks in the past few months and the cost to various economies, countries affected have rallied their leadership and cybersecurity institutions to take a decision toward ending the economic virus that is ransomware attackers once and for all.
The unending concern of attacks by cyber criminals led to the creation of a coalition of 40 countries to completely end the scourge of ransomware attacks to their regions in the future, the U.S led alliance which was created by U.S President Joe Biden in 2021 has since held annual International summits to tackle cybersecurity issues while initially bringing 31 countries together, it has now grown to 48 countries as 13 additional countries as well as law enforcement institutions such as Interpol have joined the coalition and are all to be represented at a summit come Friday this week. At the core of the agenda would be the signing of a pledge to no longer accept ransom demands from malicious entities. The International Counter Ransomware Initiative will be discussing with 48 countries to make a joint decision on cutting off payments to ransomware attackers with the aim of stopping future attacks by cyber criminals whose primary revenue source comes from attacking large companies, hacking and extracting their data in order milking them dry using blackmail and threats of publicizing or selling sensitive company data.
White house representative, Anne Neuberger expressed her optimism toward the move at a press briefing held this past Monday and further added;
“Ransomware is an issue that knows no borders, you have attackers in a set of countries using infrastructure in another set of countries targeting victims, hospitals, schools, companies and governments, around the world”
Fund Retriever’s Head of Cybersecurity has expressed his enthusiasm about the initiative and will be present at the summit along side Heads of top cybersecurity units in Australia to see to future of cybersecurity and stronger defense against cyber attacks worldwide. He had this to say in a statement;
“there has never been a better time to take such an action as now. These criminals must be stopped and it can only take such a dauntless venture to cripple them permanently, with the pressure of demands for advanced cyber security from our clientele of organizations, government institutions and high profile individuals, I would say that this is an opportune time to take action”