Cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, and malicious actors targeting digital environments operate on the same principles as most of the organizations they target. It’s a risk-reward model, where the return on investment can be very lucrative when a victim pays a ransom to get their data back.
Ransomware attacks remain a permanent threathealthcare becoming a prime target, says top cybersecurity official.
![Charles Carmakal, CTO at Mandiant, speaks with theCUBE about the cybersecurity threat at mWise 2024.](https://d15shllkswkct0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2024/09/Charles-Carmakal-2-300x200.jpg)
Charles Carmakal, CTO at Mandiant, speaks with theCUBE about the evolution of cybersecurity threats.
“We have seen a lot of attacks on healthcare organizations in the last few months,” he said. Charles Carmakal (photo), CTO of Mandiant (part of Google Cloud). “Malicious actors realize that if you target a healthcare organization, if you disrupt their ability to provide patient care, those organizations will feel compelled to pay a potential extortion demand, because there is obviously value in the ability to care for human lives.”
Carmakal spoke to CUBE Research John Fourier And Savannah Peterson has mWISE 2024during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s live streaming studio. They discussed cybersecurity threats and the need for continued law enforcement action, as well as defending against threats posed by generative artificial intelligence. (*Disclosure below.)
Cybersecurity Threats: Neutralizing Malicious Infrastructure
Attacks on healthcare facilities and other organizations have prompted law enforcement in the United States, Europe, and Canada to take action by disrupting infrastructure used by global threat actors. A task force of government agencies has been established recently succeeded in finding and disabling malicious systems used by hacker groups to infect cybersecurity testing tools.
“I’m always happy to see law enforcement take action,” Carmakal said. “When bad actors lose money, when they lose infrastructure, when they get arrested, when they get charged, those are all important steps that help create more fear and consequences for bad actors. If there were no law enforcement action, crime would skyrocket. They certainly prevent a lot of illegal activity from happening.”
There is also the constant concern that adoption of generative AI Attacks by malicious actors will complicate defense efforts against attacks. The good news, Carmakal says, is that this scenario has not yet become a reality.
“We respond to about 1,300 security incidents a year and we study how generative AI is being used by adversaries,” he said. “In most cases, it’s not really being used by adversaries to get into organizations. We may see some research going on, maybe there’s some use of generative AI to help create better phishing emails. But overall, we don’t see a lot of malicious use of generative AI to attack organizations.”
The volume of daily threats and the multitude of tools to address them can leave some security professionals feeling overwhelmed by the scope of protection needed. Carmakal advises organizations to take an approach focused on top risks.
“There are endless threats that you could try to prepare for, and you could drive yourself crazy trying to prepare for everything,” he explained. “As a company, you need to understand what the most relevant and prevalent threats are for an organization like yours, for your industry, and how to defend against the types of threats that are most likely to come to your organization. Focus on the common stuff; try not to get too fixated on the edge cases.”
Here’s the full video interview, part of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research’s coverage of mWISE 2024:
(*Disclosure: Google Cloud Security sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Google nor other sponsors have editorial control over the content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
Photo: SiliconANGLE
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