Cisco Chief Security and Trust Officer John Stewart discusses cybersecurity threats on “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Interesting conversation (only a few minutes):
Experience only 25 years so far (Internet Cyber security)
Where does the gap need to be closed (the board versus operations communications and understanding)
The spam delivery mechanism changed the game last year – now there is not only more spam (250% more) but it is harder to detect from where it is coming, since they are being sent from 3000 sites (instead of 3) in low volumes. Before we could deny the small number of spam servers, now there are thousands of spam servers sending low volume. So the spam and inevitably the spear phishing attempts are getting through a bit more than before.
Thus the anti-spam mechanisms are not quite as effective.
So the other thing that happened last year is the goal of the hackers, the goal is to get money, thus (PIN) Personally Identifiable Numbers (ss#, cc#, birthday, etc.)
There are also other types of attacks: embarrassment in the form of DOS, where an attack can cause disruption of service or an attack which can make changes in the way your business operates.
An example is the Lizardsquad attack on Christmas of last year (we posted this) http://oversitesentry.com/krebs-notes-lizard-attacked-sony-with-home-routers/
So to recap the spammers with their deadly malware cargo (ransomware) are more sophisticated and thus more effective.
Contact Us to review your cybersecurity posture
1 thought on “John Stewart Cisco Security Exec interviewed by Bloomberg”