There’s no “I” in team, and there surely isn’t one in ransomware either. For this reason, cyber resilience platform Halcyon is extending an olive branch both to the public and private sectors to tackle the threat of ransomware as a collective.
Last month, Halcyon debuted its Ransomware Research Center (RRC), an initiative that aims to bring threat researchers, policy leaders, and other stakeholders together to produce ransomware-focused threat intelligence, share expertise, and “take collective action at scale.”
Teamwork makes the dream work. The public–private coalition is led by Cynthia Kaiser, who is SVP of the initiative. Kaiser, a former deputy assistant of the FBI’s cyber division, told IT Brew that the impetus for launching the RRC was to foster collaboration within the industry and its different players to better address the threat of ransomware.
“There’s so many other entities out there with so much good information and right now, we all put it out so piecemeal,” Kaiser said. “What we wanted to do was to create a way in which we could bring people together [and] talk about things that are comprehensive.”
Kaiser explained the industry as a whole has yet to find a way to “holistically” tackle and reduce ransomware. She said there are also gaps present in how the industry and government work together to defend against cyber threats.
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“There’s certainly ways in which industry has a lot more information than the government,” Kaiser said. “There’s things the government has that they could really share a lot more on, too.”
What’s on the agenda? Kaiser said the RRC will create “baselines” on threat actor profiles and communicate where people can go to obtain basic information related to ransomware, such as how many attacks have occurred during the year.
“That seems simple, but it’s actually really difficult and can really cause a lot of issues,” she said.
Kaiser also sees potential opportunities to collaborate with Information Sharing and Analysis Centers and startups to share industry-specific ransomware intelligence and create more comprehensive intelligence.
Much needed. Ransomware continues to pose a rampant threat across different industries. For instance, Comparitech data that examined both confirmed and unconfirmed ransomware attacks worldwide found that there were 464 total incidents in the month of July alone.
Ven Auvaa, director of information security at ArmorPoint, told IT Brew that having an initiative with a specialized focus on ransomware and one that bolsters collaboration between the public and private sectors is “revolutionary.”
“Having one center where we have ransomware specialists and threat researchers all working together, instead of just one single person working for one single organization, that’s going to…allow for a lot more deeper research.”