Dive Brief:

• The Dutch National Police, Europol, Intel Security and Kaspersky Lab announced Monday their collaboration on a new initiative designed to fight ransomware.
• The initiative, called No More Ransom, includes an online portal to inform the public about the dangers of ransomware and how to protect themselves.
• The project also provides tools that can help ransomware victims recover their data after it has been secured by criminals.

Dive Insight:

The group encourages people affected with ransomware not to pay and also encourages companies that become victims of ransomware to inform law enforcement.  

"The biggest problem with crypto-ransomware today is that when users have precious data locked down, they readily pay criminals to get it back," Jornt van der Wiel, Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab said in an announcement. "That boosts the underground economy, and we are facing an increase in the number of new players and the number of attacks as a result. We can only change the situation if we coordinate our efforts to fight against ransomware."

The FBI also recently advised companies that become victims of a ransomware attack not to pay because it only encourages the hackers.

Ransomware is a huge threat globally for consumers, businesses and government. Kaspersky said the number of users attacked by crypto-ransomware rose by 550%, from 2014-2015 to 2015-2016. A May report from Kaspersky Lab found ransomware is now the most prolific cyberthreat of 2016.