Hello. Cybersecurity executives aren’t confident that they can fend off attacks even though the U.S. government has introduced new initiatives to disrupt cybercrime and strengthen security. Ransomware is growing, and corporate cybersecurity teams are becoming burned out as they deal with a quickening pace of attacks, said Patrick Gaul, executive director of the National Technology Security Coalition, an advocacy group for chief information security officers.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced last week that it is setting up a task force on ransomware. But the government likely only knows about one quarter of ransomware attacks due to a lack of reporting, according to a report published last week by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The lack of data makes it difficult for the government to help victims, the report said.

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Despite Washington’s recent attempts to expand cybersecurity rules and disrupt hacking gangs, ransomware continues to proliferate and executives report unease about their companies’ ability to ward off the threat.

The number of ransomware attacks against U.S. businesses has continued to increase this year, cybersecurity experts say, while some lawmakers warn the government has limited visibility of such hacks. Companies that rapidly digitized their operations during the pandemic are spending more time and effort navigating a fast-changing and treacherous ransomware landscape.

About 19% of cyber risk executives are highly confident in their organization’s ability to understand and respond to cyber threats, according to a more than 660-person survey published Thursday by Marsh & McLennan Co.’s insurance broking business and Microsoft Corp.

“It reflects that, despite the significant amount of time and energy and resource that organizations are spending on cyber, the risk environment continues to evolve and expand such that it’s difficult to get ahead of it or get on top of it,” said Thomas Reagan, cyber risk practice leader for the U.S. and Canada at Marsh.

Verizon Communications Inc.’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report, published last week, found that ransomware’s involvement in data breaches rose by 13% over the course of the past year, more than the increase in the previous five years combined.

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Spain to reform secret services after Pegasus scandal. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (pictured, above) said the country will strengthen judicial control over its secret services after it was revealed last month that intelligence services hacked top Catalan politicians’ phones using spyware from the NSO Group. The government also confirmed that Mr. Sanchez and the defense and interior ministers’ phones were hacked. Mr. Sanchez is the first head of government to be confirmed as a hacking target using NSO Group’s Pegasus software. (AFP)

Russian prosecution of REvil ransomware group is stalled. A lawyer for one of the suspects told Russian media that the investigation is stalled due to a lack of U.S. cooperation. Russian authorities arrested several suspects allegedly affiliated with the REvil group in January in a joint operation with U.S. officials. The lawyer representing suspect Oleg Khramov told Russian media he has asked authorities to drop the case. A working group between U.S. and Russian officials that coordinated on cybersecurity hasn’t met since Russia invaded Ukraine, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council told CyberScoop in April. (CyberScoop)

China issues warnings about U.S. hacking. China’s Foreign Ministry and the domestic cybersecurity industry have been warning of U.S. cyberespionage since the beginning of the year, something they rarely did before. Chinese cyber firms and media have alleged that U.S. intelligence authorities have hacked Chinese companies and monitored 45 countries.​

• Cyber threat analysts say the accusations can be strategically useful for China's propaganda campaigns when the U.S. warns about Chinese hacking.
• An analyst at cybersecurity company Mandiant told Wired that Chinese authorities refer in their warnings to old U.S. hacking tools dating back to the Snowden leaks or the Shadow Brokers group, which had ties to the 2017 leak of National Security Agency hacking tools.
• Some analysts see the Chinese accusations as part of a broader battle between the U.S. and China over national security issues. The U.S. and other Western nations have described China as a bigger cyber threat than Russia, Iran and North Korea. (Wired)

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Contact Enterprise Technology Editor Steve Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @Steve_Rosenbush.