Government launches consultation on proposed legislation to address the threat of ransomware
The government is proposing legislation which will increase incident reporting and reduce payments to criminals. The 3 proposals are:
- A targeted ban on ransomware payments for all public sector bodies, including local government, and for owners & operators of CNI that is regulted or has competent authorities.
- A new ransomware payment prevention regime, to cover all potential payments from the UK.
- A ransomware incident reporting regime, which could include a threshold-based mandatory reporting requirement for suspected victims of ransomware.
Government's motivation for these proposals is to reduce cyber crime and the associated harm to UK businesses, while also reducing the national security threat posed by ransomware attacks, with the aim of meeting three key objectives:
- Reduce the amount of money flowing to ransomware criminals from the UK, thereby deterring criminals from attacking UK organisations.
- Increase the ability of operational agencies to disrupt and investigate ransomware actors by increasing our intelligence around the ransomware payment landscape.
- Enhance the government’s understanding of the threats in this area to inform future interventions, including through cooperation at international level.
techUK welcomes government's recognition of the significant and increasing threat that ransomware poses to the UK's national and economic security as well as its citizens, and we applaud the ambition to reduce the harm being caused by ransomware attacks. We look forward to engaging with the Home Office on these proposals to ensure that any legislation is fit for purpose, takes account of the complexity of ransomware, and does not have unintended consequences for the victims of these attacks.
The Ransomware: proposals to increase incident reporting and reduce payments to criminals consultation will close at 5pm on Tuesday 8th April.
techUK will be submitting a response on behalf of members. If you would like to contribute to techUK’s response, please contact Annie Collings at [email protected].
Members are also encouraged to submit your own response to the Consultation.
More on the legislative proposals is below
The Home Office is seeking feedback on these objectives and has shortlisted the options for the outcome of the consultation, these are:
Option 0: Do Nothing.
Option 1: A complete ban on ransomware payments.
Option 2: A targeted ban on ransomware payments for regulated CNI and the public sector.
Option 3: A ransomware payments prevention regime for all ransomware payments.
Option 4: Mandatory reporting of a payment prior to the transaction (sector specific or economy wide).
Option 5: A mandatory ransomware incident reporting regime for all sectors.
Option 6: Mandatory reporting of ransomware incidents for specific sectors.
The description of the shortlisted policy options can be found here.
The proposed legislative options aim to reduce the risk of harm from ransomware to the UK, a logic model is presented below:
- Outcome 1: Reduce criminal intent, through undermining the ransomware business model. Reducing the amount of money flowing to ransomware criminals will undermine the ransomware business model, making the UK a less attractive target to criminals.
- Outcome 2: Reduce criminal capability, through bolstering UK law enforcement ability to disrupt and investigate ransomware criminals. The government will be able to increase operational partners ability to disrupt and investigate ransomware actors by increasing the government’s visibility and knowledge of the ransomware payment landscape.
- Outcome 3: Reduce vulnerability, through improving resilience. The government will use improved reporting to identify, track and mitigate vulnerabilities, through increased understanding of the threat landscape.
- Outcome 4: Reduce impact, through expanding preparedness. The government will use improved reporting to increase understanding of the threat landscape to inform future interventions.
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