Defeating Ransomware: A 360° Review of the RTF Four Years On
Megan Stifel, Carole House, Allan Liska, Michael Phillips, John Davis
RSA Conference 2025 · Day 1 · Policy
Four years after the Ransomware Task Force published its landmark forty-eight-recommendation report, the panelists who built it — including the Executive Director, two working group co-chairs, the NSC official who turned RTF recommendations into government policy, and the Lloyd's of London cyber insurance underwriter who saw the financial fallout firsthand — gathered to give an honest account of what changed, what didn't, and what the arc of ransomware looks like in 2025. The verdict: roughly fifty percent progress, sustained disruption operations, but the threat is still growing and the policy infrastructure to fight it is now under pressure. ---
AI review
The definitive retrospective on the Ransomware Task Force four years on, featuring the people who actually built it and turned it into policy. Unusually honest about partial progress and genuine failures. The convergence of nation-state and criminal actors, the shifting economics of ransomware toward data-theft-only, and the enforcement infrastructure now being dismantled are the substantive contributions. Dense with firsthand insight that doesn't appear in public reporting.