US sanctions against Russia curbed ransomware attacks

National Security Agency Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce said that ransomware attacks have become less prevalent in the past few months as a result of U.S. sanctions against Russia amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine that have made cybercrimes more challenging to execute, according to ZDNet. "One interesting trend we see is, in the last month or two ransomware is actually down. There's probably a lot of different reasons why that is, but I think one impact is the fallout of Russia-Ukraine. As we do sanctions and it's harder to move money and it's harder to buy infrastructure on the web, we're seeing them less effective and ransomware is a big part of that," said Joyce at the National Cyber Security Centre's Cyber UK event. Despite the reduction, ransomware attacks are poised to continue, with organizations remaining to be threatened to pay demanded ransoms, prompting the NCSC to recommend the implementation of various security practices, including timely software updates and patches, as well as multi-factor authentication.