ABSTRACT
In the broader context of great power competition, open societies, like the United States, are increasingly at risk and the safe harbor that ransomware and other cybercriminals are tacitly (or overtly) granted by the likes of North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia, provide freedom of movement to malicious cyber actors with a low threat of meaningful consequences. With cyberspace as the vehicle or medium by which ransomware and malicious code are delivered, hacks are often viewed as a technical problem necessitating a technical solution. But, the focus on technical solutions means that the policy and economic aspects of the ransomware and cybercrime problem remain underdeveloped. Ultimately, the rapid convergence of information technology and operations technology in the systems that manage and operate our critical infrastructure – from electric grids to pipelines to financial trading platforms – indicates that risk mitigation requires a comparable merging of strategy and policy to meaningfully lessen the impact a cyberattack can have on software-based and physical systems, and the customers those systems serve. To achieve a robust, multi-sector cybersecurity posture, a new level of coordination within the cyber ecosystem is needed, with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities, tactics, and services to maximize technical capabilities and jurisdictional authority to mitigate risk.
