White House warns companies to step up cybersecurity, but is it too late?

Crippling ransomware attacks are hitting businesses, governments, and the public sector with alarming regularity.

The severity of the situation is such that the White House has taken the unprecedented step of issuing a warning to the private sector, urging firms to step up in light of these attacks.

However, while a warning from the oval office is a step in the right direction, some cybersecurity experts are calling it too little too late.

Tim Callan, Chief Compliance Officer of digital identity leaders, Sectigo said, “While the White House warning businesses to step up security against the rising tide of ransomware is a welcome move, the benefit of hindsight is clearly operating here. In order to be truly safe against attacks on the likes of JBS and the Colonial Pipeline, businesses need to take pre-emptive action, rather than making changes after the fact.

“A key element in protecting our networks against bad actors is secure digital identity. Businesses need safe and secure methods of verifying and protecting all human and machine identities across networks, or they will remain sitting ducks to threat actors.

“With social engineering attacks such as phishing one of the most common vectors for criminals – and only increasing in popularity – creating proper identity protocol across organisations will go a long way to protecting against future ransomware attempts.”