Ransomware and Observations from Recent IR Investigations

Ransomware continues to be one of the most significant cyber security
issues affecting organizations today. The attack is very effective and
can be carried out relatively cheaply, making for larger net profits.
With no end in sight to this nasty threat, Luke McNamara, our host and
Principal Analyst for FireEye, spoke with someone who has a front-row
seat into how organizations think about ransomware and other similar
threats. For that we turned to Charles Carmakal, our SVP & CTO for
Mandiant, and one of our leading incident response experts.

On this episode of our Eye on Security podcast, Charles and Luke
explore the rise and evolution of ransomware—from the early days of
threat actors automating ransomware infections without knowing who
their victim was, to the more recent trend of breaking into
organizations with known vulnerabilities, taking critical data,
deploying encryptors and asking for much more money.

They then turn their discussion to the C-suite. Charles shares
perspectives from the board when it comes to cyber threats, noting
that while leadership is much more aware of cyber security and risk
management than they were in the past, many still won’t understand the
gravity of the situation until it’s happening to them.

Closing out the conversation, Charles shares customer stories
involving nation-state intrusions, the use of public offensive
security tools by nation-states, and the struggles organizations have
had securing their now remote workforces.