Things just got serious. Business Email Compromise is no longer solely the province of chancers and opportunistic Nigerian actors such as the Yahoo Boys. Organised criminal gangs with a high level of professionalism have seen the opportunity and seized it. Security researchers at Agari have published a report detailing their investigations into a Russian cybercrime gang they say have stolen millions of dollars from companies in 46 countries since mid-2019.

I’ve worked in the IT field for over 30 years. 20 of those years have been spent in the network security field, employed by some of the largest names in the industry. But to my family, I’m still just the guy who “works with computers”. Many of my family are not computer savvy, which is a nice way of saying I had to teach them where the power button is. However, “Power Button Locator” is just one of my jobs. Windows won’t boot up?

Ransomware has been around for decades going back all the way to 1989. Since then it has only magnified in scope and complexity. Now at a time when working remotely is becoming more universal and the world is trying to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic, ransomware has never been more prominent. Ransomware is a type of malware that prevents users from accessing their system or personal files and demands a “ransom payment” in order to regain access.

If the global cybercrime forecast took the form of a weather report, it might go something like this: The extended outlook calls for continued online lawlessness, scattered malware attacks and an ongoing blizzard of data breaches. After all, with experts predicting that the cybercrime epidemic will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021 as the shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals climbs to 3.5 million unfilled positions, the metaphor of dark skies is hardly an exaggeration.

In 2020, car manufacturer Honda fell victim to a ransomware attack. Using a payload called “update.exe,” the attack crippled Honda’s international customer service and Financial Services wing for days. Although it affected two customer facing branches of this global corporation, the ransomware was designed to target and breach Honda’s critical ICS/SCADA environments.

The cyber threat landscape today continues to pose a myriad of unique challenges. This is especially the case for industrial organizations due to factors such as aging equipment, poor design or implementation, skills gaps and a lack of visibility. These shortcomings are exacerbated by the mean time to breach detection, which continues to hover above 150 days on average.

Hackers are once again finding unsecured MongoDB databases carelessly left exposed on the internet, wiping their contents, and leaving a ransom note demanding a cryptocurrency payment for the data’s safe return. As ZDNet reports, ransom notes have been left on almost 23,000 MongoDB databases that were let unprotected on the public internet without a password. Unsecured MongoDB databases being attacked by hackers is nothing new, of course.

What are the brakes on a car designed to do? I have asked this question many times when speaking to customers or organizations who were dipping their toes into the audit space. Invariably, their answer was, “To stop the car.” At this point, I would then ask, “Then how do you get where you want to go?”

Organizations cannot afford to neglect their PCI compliance obligations. According to its website, PCI could punish offending organizations with a monetary penalty ranging in value from $5,000 to $100,000 per month. These fines could spell the end for a small business. Acknowledging those consequences, organizations need to make sure they’re PCI compliant. More than that, they must ensure they’re prepared for when auditors come knocking on their door.