Several countries have pledged never to pay cyber criminal ransoms and to collectively work toward disrupting their financial systems.  The members affirmed their joint commitment to building their collective resilience to ransomware.  They will share data on ransomware perpetrators and techniques and establish a blacklist of information about digital wallets used to facilitate rasomware payments.
The US Department of the Treasury will share the blacklist.  The goal of these measures is to reduce member governments' vulnerability as potential targets, by eliminating the economic incentive for ransomware attacks.

Further information about the summit and the agreements has been  reported on by Computing Magazine:  Forty nations pledge not to pay cyber criminals.

The White  House have published: International Counter Ransomware Initiative 2023 Joint Statement.

This all comes in the wake of the ransomware group, LockBit announcing its intrusion of Boeing, claiming to have stolen a substantial amount of sensitive data from the company's systems: Cyber News: Boeing data leaked, attackers promise more.

What to do in the event of a cyber attack

Tell someone!  Report to IT. Report to SLT. 

Unplug the computer from the internet by removing the ethernet cable or turning the Wi-Fi off.

If you are a victim of a ransomware attack we would recommend reporting this to Action Fraud: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ as well as your data protection officer so they can advise about the data loss.  Most cyber crimes like these will also need to be reported to the ICO by your data protection officer.

Isolate the infected device and pass to IT 

Always ensure there are backups you can restore from.

Little Guide to ACTION FRAUD