UN Members Seek New Cyber Discussions Amid Rising Ransomware Attacks

Garima Kejriwal

September 30, 2021

Researchers say that although the number of countries responding to the growing number of ransomware attacks, the future of UN-led efforts to create rules about how nations need to behave in cyberspace remains disturbingly unclear. In March, an UN-based cyber discussion group struck an agreement on a set of guidelines and non-binding principles earlier this year. Russia and France, on the other hand, have proposed two competing groups to replace that forum. Stefan Soesanto, a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the ETH Zurich University, states that there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the next steps in the process. While the momentum is towards the U.S. and its allies to work together on cybersecurity, nations worldwide are struggling to secure their infrastructure from the growing number of attacks. Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, Estonia's ambassador-at-large for cyber issues, describes the situation as a pandemic that hit the world with too few doctors. Also, in light of recent attacks on the Colonial pipeline, the Biden administration has ordered federal agencies to implement some level of baseline security standards like multi-factor authentication and encryption and work towards securing their crucial infrastructure. Even though it is a daunting task to coordinate response across borders, law enforcement authorities must collaborate to investigate malicious hackers often out of their particular jurisdictions.

Abridged fromLive Mint