Philip Reiner, IST CEO, reflects on his his travels to Singapore to attend both Singapore International Cyber Week (SICW) and INTERPOL’s Global Cybercrime Conference (IGCC), two annual conferences that bring together international leaders from across government, the private sector, and academia to discuss the evolving cyber threat landscape. 

IST commends the Biden-Harris Administration for this week releasing its Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. We will support the order’s implementation, to include ongoing and planned efforts on risks and opportunities of open access and open source model components, innovative approaches to address foreign malicious actors’ use of AI in cyber-enabled activity, and management of AI usage in critical infrastructure and cybersecurity.

According to ecrime.ch data, confirmed ransomware incidents occurred in 105 countries, originating from 58 ransomware groups.  This number is relatively consistent with last year’s data, in which we calculated that incidents impacted organizations in 109 countries and documented at least 60 distinct ransomware families. 

Though the overall statistics remain relatively consistent from last year to this year, there is more to the story: new trends in the ecosystem include the shifting dynamics of ransomware groups, the rise of the education sector as a key target, and the trends in geographic distribution of attacks.