U.S. federal and state authorities have changed their approaches to ransomware in recent years, particularly since the start of the second term of President Donald Trump. The tactics of ransomware threat actors and how companies respond to the problem have also changed. This article examines those trends and presents several best practices to combat ransomware, based on an expert panel discussion at the Incident Response Forum’s Ransomware 2025 conference. John Carlin, a partner at Paul Weiss, who previously served as the top national security official for the DOJ and as Chief of Staff of the FBI, moderated the session, which included speakers from Latham & Watkins, Orrick and Kirkland & Ellis. See “Strengthening Cyber Defenses in an Ever-Evolving Threat Landscape” (Jun. 4, 2025).