Cybersecurity and the growing threat of ransomware attacks

A ransomware attack on the JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, shutdown nine plants in the U.S. and threatens to disrupt meat supplies and raise consumer prices. The attack came just weeks after another ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that disrupted gas supplies along the East Coast. These two recent breaches and Wednesday’s attack on Massachusetts’s ferry service, are among a growing list of targets that include our country’s infrastructure, government agencies, businesses, hospitals, universities and schools, and individuals. Today we talk about the rising cyber threat, who is behind these attacks, what it says about our future security and how to combat it, for instance should it be illegal to pay ransomware? Our guests are New York Times cyber security reporter NICOLE PERLROTH, author of the new book, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, and MELISSA HATHAWAY, Hathaway Global Strategies and a former cyber policy official in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.