The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced a new Pre-Ransomware Notification initiative that aims at alerting organizations of early-stage ransomware attacks.

The principle behind the initiative is simple, ransomware actors initially gain access to the target organization, then they take some time before stealing or encrypting data. The time-lapse between initial access to a network and the encryption of the systems can last from hours to days.

Being able to notify the victims in this time window can help them to limit the damages caused by the ransomware attack.