ARCHIVED STORY

Six Hundred Million Reasons to Celebrate: No More Ransom Turns FOUR!!

By John Fokker · July 27, 2020

Happy Birthday! Today we mark the fourth anniversary of the NoMoreRansom initiative with over 4.2 million visitors, from 188 countries, stopping an estimated $632 million in ransom demands from ending up in criminals’ pockets. It would be fair to say that the initiative, which started in a small meeting room in the Hague, has been integral for so many in the perpetual fight against cybercriminals.

Powered by the contributions of its 163 partners the portal, which is available in 36 languages, has added 28 tools in the past year and can now decrypt 140 different types of ransomware infection. To think, just four years ago we started with only a handful of decryptors and partners. That speaks volumes to the commitment by all members to collaborate and work together to give victims a third option; #DontPay.

All this hard work took place in an ever-changing cybercriminal landscape; during those four years ransomware criminals shifted their tactics from “spray and pay”, mostly aimed at consumers, to highly organized crime groups actively seeking to paralyze complete organizations and extort them for astronomical amounts of money.

These challenges have not discouraged NoMoreRansom and its partners; on the contrary, having a strong public private partnership between Law Enforcement and the Private sector has proven essential in several (ongoing) investigations. Without a doubt, we will be the first to admit that fighting ransomware has not been easy but that should not stop us from doing things that are hard.

We are delighted to continue supporting this initiative and play our part in fighting this global problem. However, we have to stress that the fight against ransomware is far from over, in fact we need more collaborative initiatives to combat the rise in malicious activity.  Also, there are still many individuals and organizations that do not even know about NoMoreRansom. Even within the information security industry there are those who have not heard about the availability of free decryption tools.

Please share the message: #DontPay #NoMoreRansom