The U.S. Senate passed a new law requiring the federal government to provide more support for organizations hit by ransomware.
The DHS Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act will require the Department of Homeland Security to put together dedicated teams whose goal is to provide advice to organizations on how to protect their systems. This group will also be responsible for providing technical support and incident response assistance.
These new capabilities will be available to all public and private organizations upon request, including hospitals, banks, and businesses. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer focused on how helpful this resource will be for the schools suffering from ransomware attacks across the United States.
Schumer claims that this act is an important step in protecting school districts from the recent wave of ransomware attacks that have been seen across the country.
Ransomware attacks have impacted 49 U.S. school districts within the first nine months of 2019, potentially compromising 500 K-12 schools, compared to 11 just last year.
This string of attacks makes the education sector the second most popular for ransomware attackers, just after local municipalities.
Just law month 23 local government entities in Texas were hit with ransomware attacks, proving the dire need for better protections and support.
Defending against ransomware is made simple with NNT's custom Ransomware Mitigation Kit, compromised of the automated vulnerability checks and group policy templates to automatically fix any weaknesses spotted.
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