A series of major ransomware attacks targeting gasoline and meat supplies as well as the federal government and human rights groups prompted the White House to push businesses and companies to take cyberattacks more seriously on Thursday.
In a letter addressed to corporate executives and business leaders, Anne Neuberger, the top White House cyber adviser, outlined steps companies should take to protect themselves from attacks.
“All organizations must recognize that no company is safe from being targeted by ransomware, regardless of size or location,” Neuberger said.
She said the most important takeaway from recent cyberattacks by criminal organizations asking for money in return for stolen data and systems “is that companies that view ransomware as a threat to their core business operations rather than a simple risk of data theft will react and recover more effectively.”
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The letter said the best practices to avoid ransomware attacks are multifactor password authentication, endpoint detection and response to find and stop malicious activity on a network, data encryption, and having a skilled online security team to respond to and bolster defenses from a cyberattack.
The United States is on high alert regarding cyberattacks after Russian hacking groups in the past month shut down one of the country’s critical sources of energy, the Colonial Pipeline. Earlier this week, another hack caused JBS, the largest beef producer in the country, to shut down many of its meat production factories, which created a significant concern of food shortages.
Furthermore, the Russian hackers behind the SolarWinds attack on the federal government in December launched a new global cyberattack last week on more than 150 government agencies, think tanks, and other organizations.
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The White House letter stressed that the Biden administration and the federal government are “working with like-minded partners around the world to disrupt and deter ransomware actors.”
