Ransomware gangs use stolen data to threaten CEOs. They almost never get caught

Good morning.

We all think about cybersecurity for different reasons. In the indictment unsealed yesterday in the criminal case against Eric Adams, investigators said the New York mayor “increased the complexity of his password from four digits to six” – or 10,000 possible combinations to 1 million – two days before the FBI seized his cell phone. , then told investigators he had forgotten the new code. Meanwhile, the Santee, California, city council revealed this week that it paid more than $600,000 to a ransomware consultant to respond to an attack on its servers last month. In Washington, the personal information of more than 3,000 members of Congress was leaked on the dark web. And Chinese-backed hackers are now attacking various U.S. internet providers in what are known as the Salt Typhoon attacks.

So it was fascinating to interview J. Michael Daniel, president and CEO of the Cyber ​​Threat Alliance, last night at a Fortune CFO dinner in Washington, sponsored by Workday and Deloitte (which also sponsors this newsletter). Daniel served as the National Cybersecurity Coordinator in the Obama Administration and advisor to Bush and Clinton during his years at the Office of Management and Budget. He explained how ransomware gangs are now using stolen data to physically threaten executives and their families and steal millions from company coffers. He also highlighted the low chances of being arrested, with a detection and prosecution rate of 0.05% in the United States.

Senior reporter Sheryl Estrada, who co-hosted the dinner and wrote Fortune‘s CFO Daily newsletter sparked a vein of optimism by turning the conversation to AI. Daniel believes AI gives business defenders a slight advantage because it makes it easier for them to detect the signal in the noise of constant attacks.

Nikesh Arora, President and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, believes we need a paradigm shift in how we approach cybersecurity. As he recently told me: “People are accessing infrastructure much faster and they now have economic reasons with ransomware to do so. So you need to be able to detect and stop the bad guys as quickly as possible. » For him, unsurprisingly, the answer lies in better integrated platforms. (Click here to listen to our podcast.)

For Lane Bess, CEO of Deep Instinct, the answer lies in deep learning and “cutting edge” technology that does not require a large data center. Bass says: “We need to address prevention. »

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Diane Brady
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com