State Senators of New York have proposed two new bills that would disallow usage of taxpayers’ funds to pay ransom payments when government agencies fall prey to ransomware attacks.
S7246 happens to be the first bill that was proposed by Senator Phil Boyle on January 14th, 2020. And it simply restricts the usage of tax money when it comes to paying a ransom to free up the database of small cities or towns from the file-encrypting malware. However, the bill implies only when the population of the city/town is less than 1 million.
If the bill is passed then a $5m funding is expected to push forward as a part of re-establishing the IT infrastructure of small towns and cities- as per the requirement of the current cyber landscape.
S7289 happens to be the second bill that is being pushed forward by Senator David Carlucci on January 16th, 2020. This bill if passed restricts the government agencies from paying a ransom in the event of the cyber attack on critical infrastructure.
Therefore, New York will be the first state to pass on the legislation (If/when passed) to restrict the payment of ransom when the critical infrastructure gets infected by ransomware.
However, security analysts like Bill Siegel, the founder of Coveware says that such kind of legislation will in no way demotivate the hackers in launching cyberattacks on towns and municipalities and might increase their proportion.
