London:

Ciaran Martin, who stepped down as head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre this month, will call on Boris Johnson’s government to make it illegal for companies to pay cyber hackers a ransom.

“If I had one policy card to play in the next year, I would ask for a serious examination of whether we should change the law to make it illegal for organizations in the UK to pay ransoms in the case of ransomware,” Martin will tell the Royal United Services Institute on Friday.

“The case is not a slam dunk, and if the answer is no, then we should think of something else to counter ransomware, the single biggest contemporary scourge in cyber space.”Ciaran Martin, who stepped down as head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre this month, will call on Boris Johnson’s government to make it illegal for companies to pay cyber hackers a ransom.

“If I had one policy card to play in the next year, I would ask for a serious examination of whether we should change the law to make it illegal for organizations in the UK to pay ransoms in the case of ransomware,” Martin will tell the Royal United Services Institute on Friday.

“The case is not a slam dunk, and if the answer is no, then we should think of something else to counter ransomware, the single biggest contemporary scourge in cyber space.”