Lawmakers are often criticized that they don’t give heed to the legislation of laws pertinent to cyber crimes. In majority of the states, the cyber laws are very vague about the activities of malware operators responsible for launching Trojan and ransomware attacks.
Over the last couple of months, we have seen ransomware attacks in Atlanta, Colorado and Baltimore where the perpetrators went against the respective governments. While authorities are still dealing with ransomware decrypt measures, none of the involved culprits have been caught and that’s not the point where the problem ends. We are not even sure on which criminal charges ransomware operators will be tried even if they are apprehended.
Existing Laws are Mum on Ransomware
Some skeptics are of the thought that even making pertinent laws won’t help in reducing the instances of ransomware and other related cyber attacks because of their peculiar nature. This only implies that the affected entities can only get respite from ransomware decrypt activities and it’s unthinkable to have the culprits behind bars.
Recently, every US state has implemented data breach disclosure law that obligates every organization to inform their customers and respective Attorney Generals if they incur any cyber attack. We see if quite often how companies try to hide data breaches and cyber attacks to protect their reputation. This law has primarily implemented to discourage this wrong practice. But then again, it doesn’t talk about the culprit responsible for this state of affairs.
Few States are Taking Strict Measures
Amid all this, some states are trying to strict their digital laws. For instance, Michigan has recently passed a legislation that declares possession of ransomware a criminal offense. Georgia has also prohibited the violation of terms of use of any device, application or website an offence.
Some experts think that the overhaul of legislation on cyber crimes is needed at federal level since most of the ransomware operators are working from different physical locations and their prosecution can become a headache with dissimilar laws of different jurisdictions. It’s about time Federal and state governments should start taking cyber crimes as serious as other misdemeanors.
