The Treasury Department’s guidance increases corporate responsibility to guard against attacks and avoid paying ransoms.
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Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON—Banks and other financial institutions in the U.S. reported transactions worth nearly $600 million suspected of being ransomware payments in the first half of this year, surpassing the total for all of 2020, according to a new Treasury Department report published Friday.
Officials say the data, based on so-called suspicious activity reports that financial firms are required to file, underscores the escalating threat that such cyberattacks represent to the nation.
Treasury issued the report alongside new guidance on the measures it expects companies to take to protect themselves against ransomware attacks, part of the administration’s interagency effort to stem a major national security threat. The department’s guidance, issued by its sanctions-regulatory division, the Office for Foreign Assets Control, increases corporate responsibility to guard against attacks and avoid paying ransoms. Failure to abide by the guidance risks penalties and other punitive actions by the administration.
“Ransomware actors are criminals who are enabled by gaps in compliance regimes across the global virtual currency ecosystem,”
Wally Adeyemo,
deputy secretary of the Treasury, said in a statement. “Treasury is helping to stop ransomware attacks by making it difficult for criminals to profit from their crimes, but we need partners in the private sector to help prevent this illicit activity,” he said.
Write to Ian Talley at [email protected]
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