As part of its Ransomware Action Plan the Government has announced legislative reforms. Background.

The Australian Government’s policy is that it does not condone paying ransoms to cybercriminals. It says there is no guarantee that the payment will lead to your data being recovered, that the data won’t be on-sold, or that you will not be attacked again

The proposed changes include

— Introducing a specific mandatory ransomware incident reporting to the Australian Government
— Introducing a stand-alone offence for all forms of cyber extortion
— Introducing a stand-alone aggravated offence for cybercriminals seeking to target critical infrastructure (as proposed to be regulated by the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2020).

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