Mauri (PD): ransomware security threat, yes to undercover actions

Increasingly, companies and small and medium-sized enterprises are falling victim to ransomware, a type of malicious software used by hackers to 'infect' data centres and corporate computer systems, rendering them unusable until a ransom is paid. The phenomenon, which is growing and is perceived as one of the main threats to our economy by entrepreneurs, constitutes a serious attack on national security, and requires urgent countermeasures. And it is against this backdrop that the PD comes up with a bill to prohibit ransom payments 'at least for those entities that are within the national cyber perimeter, i.e. the most sensitive and most important entities from a national security perspective'.

In the face of the ransomware threat, explains Matteo Mauri, a member of the Italian Dem Party and first signatory of a proposed law to combat cyber attacks for the purpose of extortion, which has just been deposited in Montecitorio (House Bill 2318), it is necessary to prevent the payment of ransom demands made by hackers, replicating what was done in the 1980s, when an ad hoc law 'prevented the payment of ransoms for kidnapping people', a phenomenon that was 'widespread in Italy' at the time.

Not only that. The legislative package also provides for 'the possibility for law enforcement agencies to act undercover' in countering ransomware 'also abroad, because we know perfectly well that most, if not all, of these attacks come from abroad or from criminals or sometimes even from state structures, i.e. from actual states'.