By admin 
The US government has made great progress over the past four years in the ongoing fight against the “scourge of ransomware,” as President Joe Biden put it.
Early in his term, Biden and his administration quickly declared ransomware a national security threat, creating new powers for the military and intelligence agencies. Since then, the United States has achieved success disrupted ransomware infrastructureclawed back millions in ransomand goal-oriented some of the most notorious ransomware operators facing charges and sanctions.
Despite recent government enforcement efforts, the number of cyberattacks targeting U.S. organizations continues to rise. 2024 will be another record year for ransomware. This means that when President-elect Donald Trump takes office again in January, he too will inherit a major ransomware problem.
While it is difficult to predict what the next four years of cybersecurity policy might look like, the industry as a whole is preparing for change.
“It’s hard to say what will happen with policies and regulations in the future because there are many layers and players involved in change,” Marcin Kleczynski, the CEO of anti-malware giant Malwarebytes, told TechCrunch. “However, I know that cyber attacks will not stop, no matter who is in power,” Kleczynski said, citing ransomware as one of the biggest concerns.
A mixed first semester
From a cybersecurity perspective, Trump’s first term as president was a mixed bag. One of Trump’s first (albeit delayed) executive orders after taking office in 2017 required federal agencies to immediately assess their cybersecurity risks. Then, in 2018, the Trump administration revealed the U.S. government’s first national cybersecurity strategy in more than a decade, leading to more aggressive “name-and-shame” attribution policies and the relaxation of rules to allow intelligence agencies to “hack” adversaries with offensive cyberattacks.
At the end of 2018, Congress passed a law establishment of CISAa new federal cybersecurity agency charged with protecting America’s critical infrastructure. The Trump administration chose Chris Krebs as the agency’s first director, second only to then-president dismisses Krebs immediately by tweet two years later for claiming that the 2020 election – which Trump lost – was “the most secure in American history,” contradicting Trump’s false claims that the election was “rigged.”
While cybersecurity has not been a focus of Trump’s messaging since, the Republican National Committee, which endorsed Trump for office, said during the 2024 election cycle that an incoming Republican administration would “increase security standards for our critical systems and networks.”
Expect a flood of deregulation
Trump’s push to cut federal budgets as part of his pledge to reduce government spending has raised concerns that agencies may have fewer resources available for cybersecurity, potentially making federal networks more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
This comes at a time when US networks are already under attack by hostile countries. Federal agencies have warned about this year the “broad and unrelenting threat” by Chinese-backed hackers, who recently raised the alarm about the successful infiltration of multiple US telecom providers to access real-time call and text logs.
Project 2025, a detailed blueprint written by the influential conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which reportedly serves as a “wish list” of proposals that will be taken up during a second Trump term also wants the president to pursue legislation that would dismantle the entire Department of Homeland Security and shift CISA to operate under the Department of Transportation.
Lisa Sotto, a partner at US law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth, told TechCrunch that deregulation will be an overarching theme of the Trump administration.
“This could impact CISA’s role in shaping cybersecurity regulations for critical infrastructure, potentially leading to an emphasis on self-regulation,” Sotto said.
Referring to new guidelines proposed by CISA in March Sotto said these so-called CIRCIA rules “could also be significantly revised to limit requirements around cyber incident reporting and related obligations.”
That could lead to fewer required data breach notifications from ransomware incidents and ultimately less visibility into ransom payments Security researchers have long cited this as a problem.
Allan Liska, a ransomware expert and threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, told TechCrunch in October that much of the hard work the United States has done over the past four years, including the creation of an international coalition of governments promising not to pay a hacker’s ransomcould become an early victim of large-scale government deregulation.
“The global ransomware task force that President Biden has created has accelerated many law enforcement activities because it has opened up the exchange of information,” Liska said. “There is a good chance that this will disappear, or at least that the US will no longer be part of it. of that,” he said, also warning of the risk of an increase in ransomware attacks while less information is shared.
An eye for more disruption?
With a scaled back focus on regulation, a second Trump term could pick up where he left off with offensive cyber attacks and take a more aggressive approach in an effort to tackle the ransomware problem.
Casey Ellis, founder of crowdsourced security platform Bugcrowd, says he expects an increase in U.S. offensive cyber capabilities, including increased use of hacking-back.
“Trump has a history of supporting initiatives that seek an outcome that deters enemies of America’s sovereign security,” Ellis told TechCrunch.
“I expect this to include the use of offensive cyber capabilities, as well as ramping up the type of ‘hack-back’ activities we’ve seen in recent years in the FBI’s partnership with the Department of Justice,” Ellis said. , referring to the government’s disruption efforts against botnets, DDoS booter sitesAnd malware operations in recent years. “The types of ransomware, initial access broker, cybercriminal infrastructure and quasi-governmental operations previously targeted by the U.S. government would remain a concern.”