Bill Wright is Director of Federal Affairs at Splunk, and formerly Staff Director for the Homeland

Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for the U.S. Senate.

I caught up with Bill Wright recently for his take on the seemingly relentless march of

ransomware and what he thinks might be done to slow the pace. The question I'm

often asked is you know is ransomware increasing or are the attacks just more high profile and you know I'd say both

certainly colonial made the effects of ransomware feel much more visceral for the public that wasn't following these trends closely

or wasn't listening to your podcast daily.

So I think at least a year and a half ago, Ransomware was really seen primarily as a what I would call a nuisance

cybercrime.

It hits schools, hospitals, businesses, sure.

But the disruptions were considered pretty isolated.

No one was known to have died,

and the ultimate effects were limited primarily

to those entities that were hacked.

Then came colonial pipeline,

disrupting nearly half of the East Coast fuel supply quickly

followed by another attack that threatened the nation's largest meat supplier, JBS, and then of course Kasea last month, along with many countless others that maybe didn't make the headlines.

So it quickly moved from an economic nuisance to a national security, public health, safety threat.

And I think that's the way our government is treating it now. I'm sure you've noticed the tenor of the conversations has changed.

Then you add to that the

commoditization of ransomware so ransomware as a service

ransomware as a service has really opened up ransomware

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