Any organisation that thinks it’s not big enough or important enough to be attacked is naïve, says Mark T Hofmann, international crime and intelligence analyst. ITWebSS2023 CyberSecurity
Cyber criminals today are more likely to be 11-year-old boys or corporate drones than the stereotypical faceless figures wearing hoodies, delegates heard at the opening of the ITWeb SecuritySummit 2023 in Sandton today.
“They typically begin as young as 10 or 11 years of age. As kids, they are intelligent and skilled at IT. They learn how to hack on YouTube and the Dark Web, and they do it simply because they want to be meaningful and respected. Few people take an 11-year-old seriously, but if they hack you, suddenly you’re listening.”
In addition, quality management is important to organised cyber crime. “Trust is very important in their business model, because victims need to be able to trust that if they pay a ransom, they will get their data back. Organised cyber criminals make sure you do get your data back once you’ve paid, because it protects their business model.”
For example, attackers might call an employee mid-morning, and ask if they had opened an attachment recently – knowing this would be likely. They might then claim to be from the IT department, saying the attachment was a virus, and instruct the employee to give them their user name and password urgently, so that they can remediate the attack.
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