Latest / Breaching the Boardroom / The Dark Web
Transcript
- 0:05Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for the Dark Web and Cybercrime Unmasked.
- 0:12We're excited to have you with us as we delve into the hidden layers of the internet and examine the realities of cybercrime.
- 0:19By the end of this session, our goal is for you to leave with a deeper understanding of the risks and actionable steps to strengthen your defenses.
- 0:27For those of you who aren't familiar with NetGain technologies, I'll give a brief introduction.
- 0:32We've been a trusted partner for businesses looking to make IT a strategic advantage for 40 years.
- 0:39As a SOC 2 Type 2 certified managed security services provider, NetGain offers local around the clock support and a dedicated cybersecurity team committed to keeping organizations secure.
- 0:53We encourage questions throughout the presentation, so feel free to use that feature.
- 0:59We will also have a dedicated Q &A at the end to cover any additional questions you may have.
- 1:06And as a thank you for attending, you'll receive a copy of the recording and slide deck after the webinar so you can revisit the insights and share them with your team.
- 1:16With that, let's dive in.
- 1:18Our speakers are ready to introduce themselves, so I'll hand it over to David.
- 1:23Thank you again for joining us.
- 1:26Thank you, everybody, for attending.
- 1:27We encourage participation, so please throw your questions right in the chat.
- 1:32I'm David Mauro, Vice President of Business Development and NetGain.
- 1:35As Ashley said, we're a top ranked MSSP as well as a premier managed IT company that's been around since 1984.
- 1:44I'm also a proud member of InfoGuard, which is the public private coalition nonprofit in conjunction with the FBI and the public sector to help protect the United States critical infrastructure.
- 1:58I'm excited to be joined by two gentlemen today who work with helping small and mid-sized businesses transfer and reduce risk.
- 2:06And today you're also going to get exclusive insight into what actually happens once a data breach attack occurs and best practices of reducing that risk.
- 2:16With that, I'm going to turn it over to John.
- 2:18John, go ahead.
- 2:19Thanks, David.
- 2:20And thanks, everyone.
- 2:22appreciate the invitation to join today's webinar.
- 2:25My name is John Spies.
- 2:27I am the head of claims at Converge.
- 2:30Converge is an insure tech MGA, which is a managing general agent or underwriter.
- 2:37We provide cyber insurance to small businesses.
- 2:40I have roughly 20 years of claim handling experience in the industry.
- 2:45And I'm looking forward to our discussion today.
- 2:47Thank you.
- 2:51Thanks everyone.
- 2:51Nathan Borgaard with Locked in Affinity.
- 2:53I've been at Locked in Affinity for just about 15 years and we help ensure small to medium sized businesses with focus on cyber insurance.
- 3:02Excited to be here.
- 3:03And again, like David said, we encourage participation in questions.
- 3:07Excellent.
- 3:08We're going to kick things off today with a poll question.
- 3:13I'm interested to see what everybody knows.
- 3:16You can click right here on your screen.
- 3:21I'll launch it right now.
- 3:21How much of the internet is readily accessible by the common computer user?
- 3:36It's cool to see the answers pop through.
- 3:42All righty, so that's interesting.
- 3:46Yeah, would you like me to address the results?
- 3:49Please do.
- 3:51Yeah, so the answer is actually 4%.
- 3:54So do you want to go to the next slide where we show the?
- 4:00So the internet as we mostly use it is only 4 % of the internet.
- 4:05The vast bulk of it is called the deep web and that is behind paywalls, right?
- 4:11It's research, academic, medical journals, like that, aspects like a university and their deep research.
- 4:27And then there's another section of that.
- 4:30a subsection of that, which is larger than the internet that we all use on a regular basis.
- 4:36And that's the dark web.
- 4:38So it's important to shine a light on the dark web since it shows the modus operandi of cyber crime, what cyber crime and cyber criminals plan to do and how they do it.
- 4:50That's their modus operandi.
- 4:52Without awareness, businesses are really flying blind.
- 4:56So what exactly is the dark web and how's it different?
- 4:59than the internet that we all use every day.
- 5:02Think of the internet as a vast library or shopping mall with lots of products and resources.
- 5:10The dark web is a hidden room over in the back.
- 5:14It's accessible only with special keys or in this case, special software and special tools.
- 5:20And unlike the open web, it's not searchable by Google.
- 5:26You can't get there without the special tools.
- 5:28And instead of like a dot com URL, it's going to have a dot onion URL, which is for the, the onion router.
- 5:36And some of those special tools are like the tour browser, which is the onion router to you are, user identities are hidden and a lot of things occur on the dark web.
- 5:48It's a haven for cyber crime.
- 5:51can you share what the dark web looks like for everybody?
- 5:54We went there and we took a video of it that we wanted to share.
- 5:59So here on the dark web, illegal goods and services are exchanged in marketplaces just like Amazon.
- 6:07There's also private forums and websites hosted by cyber crime gangs where they sell their malware services, recruit new gang members, provide tools of the trade, et cetera.
- 6:21So why should we care?
- 6:22I mean, why do business leaders need to know about the dark web or need to care?
- 6:27Can ignoring it kind of put your organization at risk?
- 6:32The answer to that is absolutely yes.
- 6:35Criminal groups operate just like legitimate businesses, selling stolen credentials, violence for hire, even murder for hire, human and drug trafficking, stolen intellectual property, and even offering ransomware as a service.
- 6:51Ransomware as a service is a turnkey platform that are built by these cybercrime gangs.
- 6:58Black Hat, Lockbit, Akira, Ransom Hub, some of the ones you hear about in the media.
- 7:06And these turnkey platforms operate just like Salesforce or HubSpot, except they track extortion campaigns rather than marketing campaigns.
- 7:18Small businesses generally believe in a myth.
- 7:21And the myth is that they're too small to be targeted.
- 7:26And most lack adequate defenses, making them easy targets, or they become collateral damage in larger attack campaigns that are launched through these ransomware as a service and malware as a service platforms.
- 7:42And they have all those vulnerabilities found right there on the dark web.
- 7:47To keep customers trust and to maintain a competitive edge, leaders really need to know first, is your data on the dark And not only now, is it in the future being discussed, meaning are they talking about hitting your sector?
- 8:06Are they talking about hitting your type of business in your type of state?
- 8:10Because right there on the dark web, they're talking about that and monitoring that and checking that allows you to understand the modus operandi so that you can defend yourself.
- 8:22It's the old phrase that the FBI uses and that is you can't defend against the foe you don't know.
- 8:28Right?
- 8:29So you have to know who it is and what they're going to be attacking with.
- 8:34Having 24 seven eyes on glass, not only for the dark web, but for your devices and for the applications that you use is absolutely critical.
- 8:43Does anybody have any questions on the dark web?
- 8:47again, throw them in chat.
- 8:49John and Nathan.
- 8:53I see a lot of small businesses, medium sized businesses, and a lot of the feedback I get from them is that, I'm too small.
- 9:01These, cyber gangs aren't targeting me.
- 9:03What were they?
- 9:03What would they want with my data?
- 9:05And the thing that I always have to explain is that they're not targeting you, you know, John business owner, they're targeting your software or the vulnerabilities in your software or your network.
- 9:15and they're just launching this stuff on a mass scale.
- 9:18So they're not really looking at you as the retail shop on main street.
- 9:21They're looking at.
- 9:22you know, the Microsoft vulnerability that you haven't patched yet, or they're looking that you're using an outdated system.
- 9:29And that's where they go after.
- 9:30They're not going after you specifically.
- 9:32It is really just a broad attack on vulnerabilities in the system.
- 9:37Yeah.
- 9:38And it really gets into what a hacker is, right?
- 9:40Because these platforms are so plug and play.
- 9:44When we think of a hacker or what Hollywood and the media has portrayed hackers as being is what?
- 9:50What comes to mind?
- 9:52What's the picture in your mind?
- 9:53When I say a hacker, we think of a kid in a hoodie, right?
- 9:58Cracking red bull, like right now this complicated code in mom's basement, launching all these sophisticated attacks.
- 10:06That's not real.
- 10:08Like, yeah, they exist, right?
- 10:11We, we, we all know one, right?
- 10:14But the, but the point is, that they really don't need to be very technical.
- 10:20Right?
- 10:20Because these platforms are so user friendly and plug and play that all you have to do is have criminal intent and to do the action.
- 10:33And there's a lot more people with criminal intent than there are with the technical chops to write code and do that.
- 10:42You don't need to know the code.
- 10:43You just need to buy the platform and subscribe to it and use it.
- 10:47And that's why we've seen such a massive spike and rise in attacks like ransomware and other vulnerabilities.
- 10:58Just real quick, David, just to jump off your and Nathan's points.
- 11:02When I think of the dark web, I think of where novice criminals go to become expert cyber criminals, because you can buy access to compromised networks from an access broker.
- 11:14You can buy login credentials, credit cards, social security numbers, PII, stolen goods.
- 11:19Social engineering and phishing kits.
- 11:21mean, the Naaman's Shame sites where we have to go to communicate with these threat actors when ransomware hits, they're out there.
- 11:28The data where they publish is out there.
- 11:31That's just, you know, it's just one of those areas where I've never actually gone myself because I'm too scared, but I've seen it used and it's a pretty scary place.
- 11:40So.
- 11:41Yeah.
- 11:42To David's point on the kid in the hoodie in the basement, I that's not the case.
- 11:46These are sophisticated businesses.
- 11:48They offer 401k, dental, vision, health insurance, high pay.
- 11:52They have office buildings where people go and report to work every day.
- 11:56I these are actual legitimate businesses in the countries and the areas that they operate in.
- 12:02You know, that was really surprising to me when I got an insight into that a few years ago.
- 12:05But yeah, it's legitimate big business.
- 12:08Yeah, when you think of cyber.
- 12:11What should I do if my Microsoft or Google account notifies me my info is on the dark web?
- 12:18Great point.
- 12:19You need to work with a security person because what needs to occur is you need to identify where it's located, like what the compromise is, change the passwords, engage multi-factor authentication, and then re-scan.
- 12:40those are generally top steps.
- 12:43Keeping multifactor authentication engaged and on on all of your platforms, it's out there, it's involved in almost every social media as well as all of your Microsoft 365 platforms.
- 12:59And it's really, really important as we'll get to in just a bit.
- 13:04Do you want to show us the next slide?
- 13:12To that last question, I would say contact your insurance carrier.
- 13:18Submit a claim.
- 13:21They can help you out.
- 13:22They have resources that they can point you to.
- 13:25Yeah, another thing to notice and make sure it's legitimate.
- 13:28Make sure that that notification is actually legitimate.
- 13:32Yeah, because that is one of the red flags of phishing emails is that your account has been compromised.
- 13:38If there's a sense of urgency and that Microsoft is going to do something.
- 13:42within a short period of time, otherwise something's bad is going to happen and it creates evokes emotion in you.
- 13:47It's not legitimate.
- 13:50I want another poll question.
- 13:52The answer to this really surprised me.
- 13:57how long are threat actors inside networks undetected.
- 14:08another question here for you after we end this.
- 14:20I'll go ahead and ask it if these criminals operate as businesses, why are they not caught and prosecuted?
- 14:25Great question.
- 14:27I love this question.
- 14:28So the reason is it's not illegal where they operate from.
- 14:33They operate in a part of the world where they operate with impunity.
- 14:38OK, the United States does not trade with several countries and they operate from those countries predominantly while they will engage some other pieces and some various, you know, associates of them may live in other parts of the world.
- 14:55The core groups live in areas that we don't trade with.
- 14:59So if they bankrupt a small to mid-sized business in the United States, nothing's going to happen.
- 15:05Less than 3 % of cyber criminals are ever prosecuted despite what we do.
- 15:12Right.
- 15:12in, and if they steal a fancy word like Exfiltrate is the word you'll hear us say, but it's a fancy word for steal.
- 15:22They steal and bankrupt us, right?
- 15:25And they bring millions of dollars to their town and they're able to spend it on their economy.
- 15:32They are high-fived.
- 15:33They are congratulated.
- 15:35They operate with impunity.
- 15:36The only rule that they have is they are not allowed to target any CIS countries, any organizations within the CIS countries.
- 15:46CIS countries for lack of a better phrase, are the former USSR.
- 15:55I'm going to end and share these results here.
- 15:58So got it correct.
- 16:00Yeah.
- 16:01So a lot of people did get this correct.
- 16:02So why does this poll matter?
- 16:04Well, it's because not all breaches are created equal.
- 16:08There are some that occur quickly and there were a lot of best practices ahead of time and they're able to restore quickly.
- 16:14They don't have to notify their customers and it costs money and they were down a little bit, but they bounced back pretty well.
- 16:21That occurs when organizations do the best practices ahead of time.
- 16:25which is part of the reason why CISA and the FBI say to do the best practices, because it not only reduces your insurance premiums, but it reduces the claim amount and it reduces the fact that you'll ever be breached in the first place.
- 16:38Most organizations do not do a lot of the best practices and criminals, cyber criminals are inside for a long time.
- 16:47During that time, they will encrypt backups.
- 16:50They will create back doors.
- 16:51So in case you do come across them and kick them out, they can get right back in.
- 16:56They will also gather up intelligence.
- 16:58If they get inside somebody's email, the first thing they're going to do is go into your scent box and see all of the intellectual property and sensitive information that you've sent out months ago that you forgot that you sent.
- 17:11People keep too much data.
- 17:13They know that that's one of the things that they'll do.
- 17:15The longer they're in undetected is worse.
- 17:18Think of it like somebody having your wallet and they're using your credit cards for more than six months without you knowing it, without you being able to call your credit card and have them cancel it because that's what occurs.
- 17:35So John, do you want to kind of walk us through some of the ways that, they actually get in, in the first place?
- 17:42Sure.
- 17:43So the next slide is the top cyber threats that are typically seen.
- 17:48So the first one, and one of the most common is the email.
- 17:52So essentially, this is when a threat actor is able to gain unauthorized access to a business email account.
- 17:58And the most common way that this is done is via a phishing email.
- 18:03So essentially, what happens is, is a user will get an email that looks legitimate, and it'll ask them to reset their password, or it'll say, you know, log into your account, you will enter in your login credentials, and boom.
- 18:19they have them, they've even, they'll be able to steal that cookie or that token.
- 18:26think about the damage that they can do once they're inside your email account.
- 18:30So it depends on whose email account that is, right?
- 18:33But think about six months spending in a CFO's account or an accounts receivable clerk or the HR director.
- 18:44Like how much information is in there?
- 18:46And as you mentioned, David, people keep a lot of stuff they don't even remember that they have.
- 18:52So it's always one of my biggest pet peeves is that the lack of data hygiene that some of businesses practice in that they don't delete old data, don't archival data, and that they don't get rid of data that is outdated, like six, eight years old, 10 years sometimes.
- 19:12what the point of all of this is is that the threat actor will be in there and they will try to monetize the data.
- 19:18whatever they can find in there, whether it's PII, which is personally identifiable information or PHI, it's health information.
- 19:27Can they use that?
- 19:28Invoices, bank account information or banking information, customer information, other email addresses, they'll send out phishing, know, 6,000 emails to your customers in hopes that they'll click on that link and enter their credentials in.
- 19:44So it just goes on and on and on.
- 19:46So...
- 19:46The point is really that they'll get in there and they will use whatever they can find to monetize that data.
- 19:55The second kind of attack here is the DDoS attacks, which is a distributed denial of service attack.
- 20:01Essentially, the threat actor makes a machine or network or resource unavailable to its intended users, usually by overwhelming a website or something like that, so that people who actually want to go out and use it can't.
- 20:15And eventually, you can start racking up losses there, loss revenues and things like that.
- 20:22Social engineering, this is kind of where people are manipulated into performing actions or divulging information.
- 20:29That's the phishing, that's the phishing, fishing, quishing, all of those, then solicitation, all of those tactics.
- 20:39Right, it can be done email, text, phone, all three, you name it, it can be done.
- 20:45Some of the more common types of social engineering that we see are when someone is purports to be an employee and they change payroll information.
- 20:53So then all of sudden, you know, every two weeks their paycheck goes someplace else.
- 20:58One of the hallmarks of social engineering is that the threat actor will pretend to be somebody who's very important within the organization, like a CEO, CFO, board member, somebody who, and it's always really urgent, you know, it's, I muted myself.
- 21:16It has to be done right now.
- 21:18So please do it and don't ask questions.
- 21:22So what happens is, is when you have that type of situation, the user is not likely to validate or question those instructions because it's someone who is their superior.
- 21:31So another type of variation on social is an invoice manipulation where instead of making a payment request internally to send out the insured's funds to pay someone else, the invoice or the insured's own invoices for services that they provide get sent out with altered instructions or maybe they're fraudulent altogether.
- 21:52And that way, your client will pay the threat actor, the client's out money and you don't get paid for the services that you provided.
- 22:00So that's really kind of a double win.
- 22:02And then finally, ransomware is the final matter, which is the one that most people really love to hear about.
- 22:08But that's malware that encrypts or locks all files and data on the insurance network.
- 22:14which makes them inaccessible unless you're able to restore from a backup or you have to pay ransom to obtain a decryption tool.
- 22:22The decryption tool will then unlock or decrypt all those encrypted files and allow the insurer to get back to business.
- 22:34Often now you'll see a second layer of extortion more common than or more often than not, like on top of the encryption.
- 22:43you will see before the payload, the ransomware payload is dropped, you will see the threat actor coming around again for weeks, months, days, whatever, finding that most sensitive data and then downloading it or exfiltrating it onto an offsite server.
- 23:01So that way, even if you can restore from backups, they'll say, hey, we took 500 gigabytes or a terabyte of your data or eight terabytes, which is a case we'll talk later.
- 23:13And if you want that to not be published on the dark web, which we've been talking about, you need to pay us a ransom.
- 23:21And then finally, a third type of extortion where there's no decryption whatsoever.
- 23:27The threat actor will just go in, steal the data, and then try to extort that way.
- 23:32So really three different kinds of extortion that we see most commonly.
- 23:39I a question about the BEC attack portion is how do they get your customers information to send emails to them looking like it comes from you?
- 23:49They come through your email so they'll find an email to that customer.
- 23:54They'll go back, you know, because again you don't know what's in your emails.
- 23:58If you don't delete your old sent emails, you can go back and find you know a customer or an invoice or something that you sent this person to and you're like, well there's the controller at that at that location, I'm going to send them an email.
- 24:12I'm going to alter the invoice, the banking account information and hope that they don't verify.
- 24:20Or they may buy the credentials on the dark web, right, which are sold on these marketplaces.
- 24:26A lot of people have got a really good password, but they use it on everything.
- 24:31Right.
- 24:32And once that is used on a platform that's been breached, that's for sale on the dark web.
- 24:37They will go and do various tactics called like credential stuffing, password spring.
- 24:43They will take those credentials and log in as you, which again is another reason to have multifactor authentication engaged.
- 24:54Nathan, were you about to say something?
- 24:55Yeah, I just want to make a comment on the social engineering part.
- 24:59And if you guys have a cyber insurance policy, it might be listed as social engineering.
- 25:03It might be listed as fraudulent instruction.
- 25:05It's under your cybercrime.
- 25:06ensuring agreement in most cases, but all carriers call it something different.
- 25:10But this is the easiest one in what I've seen to mitigate.
- 25:15If you're transferring funds and you're getting instructions via email or text to transfer those funds, call a verified number to confirm that the instructions are accurate and correct.
- 25:28You can limit about 90 % of your financial loss just by making a phone call to a verified number.
- 25:34So it's it's not really a software that you can buy it's just a practice that you have to instill into your employees who are in charge of sending those fonts And it just gets to being vigilant on spotting phishing emails as well everybody Believes whenever somebody's gonna do security awareness training everybody believes.
- 25:56we know how to spot a fish but yet we don't write over 80 % of all data breaches still come in through social engineering.
- 26:05A vast majority still come in through phishing.
- 26:07So you started deep fake David, like we were discussing earlier that question on where their $25 million was sent through social engineering scheme that included deep fakes.
- 26:20Correct.
- 26:21So deep fakes are synthetic video, audio, and pictures that are made to impersonate somebody saying and doing things that they did not do.
- 26:31And in the last six months, they have become and evolved so much and they've gotten so good that they are virtually undetectable by the human eye, which is really exciting for creators.
- 26:47Right.
- 26:48And there are a lot of legitimate businesses that sell these products because they claim that you can scale your ability.
- 26:57You can hold sales calls, marketing calls, internal customer service.
- 27:01calls and be in multiple locations at the same time, letting AI think and act and appear like you on live video, except that cyber criminals get a hold of that.
- 27:13And they leverage that for social engineering.
- 27:15In the last six months, there have been four major ones that occurred here in the United States.
- 27:20So here's how they happen.
- 27:22Cause they've all kind of happened the same way.
- 27:24Imagine getting an email.
- 27:25That's a phishing email.
- 27:26It's asking you to release sensitive information.
- 27:29You follow.
- 27:31Nathan's advice and you try and reach the CEO, CFO or the HR person and verify it.
- 27:37But you can't get in touch with them, let's say.
- 27:39So then you receive another email and it's a calendar invite and it's a team's video call or a Zoom meeting and you get on that call and on that call is your boss or the HR person or both of them or more people that you know, people that you may know of, right?
- 27:57They're part of your organization and they look and sound and think just like them.
- 28:04And you're able to ask all your questions, alleviate all of your concerns, go ahead and release the sensitive information only to find out later in the day or the next day that that wasn't in fact them.
- 28:18And if we think that's something out of science fiction or the future, that is actually happening today.
- 28:25It has already happened four times in the last six months.
- 28:28totaling $141 million stolen in the United States.
- 28:33And it's going to be something that we see more often.
- 28:37So in terms of that, let's move on to the next batch of things to consider.
- 28:47So change healthcare, which I think a lot of us have heard of, it's a massive breach.
- 28:52It's been in the news all over the news, the CEO, actually had to testify in front of Congress.
- 28:59Why is this important?
- 29:00Well, it's the largest healthcare breach in US history, and it was completely preventable.
- 29:10It impacted over 100 million Americans, which is one in three of us on this webinar right now.
- 29:17It disrupted medical care and claims across the United States.
- 29:22According to the American Medical Association, 80 % of medical practitioners have been detrimentally affected by this breach and the recovery, even though the breach occurred back in February, the recovery is still ongoing.
- 29:38All of the systems still aren't back up and running yet.
- 29:42It's led to 55 current class action lawsuits.
- 29:46So the story is really just beginning.
- 29:49Who was behind it?
- 29:52A Russian backed ransomware gang called Black Cat, which originated from the original Conti gang, was one of the goats, one of the original run of ransomware gangs of all time.
- 30:09What's interesting is this for months, they discussed doing this attack on the dark web.
- 30:17They talked about targeting health care.
- 30:20They named change health care in their plans.
- 30:24They discussed it openly and yet it still occurred.
- 30:28The entry point and how it happened, an open server to the Internet that lacked a basic security measure, multifactor authentication.
- 30:39So while multifactor authentication might seem inconvenient, it would have prevented the largest health care breach in U.S.
- 30:47history.
- 30:50It really goes to show the effectiveness of the ransomware as a service model, right?
- 30:55Because you had Black Hat that created the platform, the software, the extortion campaigns has the forums, offers the health insurance, all of this.
- 31:03They go and they retain affiliates, which are digital mercenaries.
- 31:07And one of their affiliates went and did the attack, launched the attack, collected the data, right?
- 31:15And then sent it to Black Hat.
- 31:17Black Hat provided the negotiation, the money laundering and collected $22 million from Change Healthcare.
- 31:25Then Black Hat did what's called an exit scam.
- 31:29They said, no, the FBI got us and they put a big banner over their website and they ripped off their digital mercenary, their affiliate, and they closed up shop.
- 31:42And they haven't been seen since.
- 31:44And what's interesting is the digital mercenary, the hacker, He made a copy of the data.
- 31:50after they have to change health care, paid twenty two million dollars to Blackhat.
- 31:55The hacker went out, joined another gang called Ransom Hub and said, knocked on the change health care door and said, by the way, I still have your data.
- 32:05So if you don't pay me twenty two million dollars again, I'm going to go ahead and release it.
- 32:12And that is currently ongoing.
- 32:16So when we think about ransomware and what it's like in the battlefield in the day of the life.
- 32:23I want to turn over to John to explain what he sees and all of the different facets, because here's what happens in a ransomware attack.
- 32:32All of your icons on your PC will turn white because they don't know what to make of it.
- 32:38Right.
- 32:38There will be a text file on there and there will be a banner and it'll have a countdown timer.
- 32:45Right.
- 32:46For the ransomware.
- 32:47for the extortion.
- 32:49When you open up that text file, it'll say, welcome, good sir, because of your poor security hygiene, right?
- 32:57You need to get on our talks channel and negotiate with us within a certain time period.
- 33:03Otherwise, all these bad things are going to happen.
- 33:06Most small business owners are not prepared to get on a talks channel on the dark web, right?
- 33:14And negotiate with a Russian ransomware gang that's very, very good at their job and has vast amounts of resources.
- 33:22So we transfer some of that risk over to cyber insurers and our security providers.
- 33:30And I like John to kind of walk us through after boom happens and what it's like in the day in a life.
- 33:41Thanks, David.
- 33:41Excellent segue.
- 33:42So.
- 33:43I'll take it off, take a kick off from, I guess, when the insured finds that ransom note.
- 33:48It's like, what's wrong with my network?
- 33:50And they find this ransom note.
- 33:53What do they do next?
- 33:54Do they have an IR plan that's ready to go?
- 33:57Do they know who that first phone call is going to go to?
- 34:00We service a lot of small, all small insureds under $300 million in revenue.
- 34:07And most of them don't know how to negotiate or they don't have the ability to go get Bitcoin.
- 34:13They don't know what legal ramifications might arise from what's about to happen.
- 34:17So they need to have an incident response plan in place first.
- 34:21So they know either who they're going to call or they're going to call their insurance carrier because they have, we have resources at standing by that are ready to go.
- 34:29So first thing would be to reach out and set up a scope and call with privacy council or breach council and digital forensic investigative and investigative response.
- 34:44essentially that's digital forensics provider and then they also assist with restoration.
- 34:48So we can get that call set up within the hour, within two hours.
- 34:54And so that way the insured feels like, hey, something's happening, something's moving, I'm getting some help here.
- 35:02Jump on that call and they're provided, the forensics provider will ask a bunch of questions about their network, the size of their network, the...
- 35:11the footprint, how much data they may have, do they have immutable backups and immutable means that they're offline and they're air-gapped, things like that.
- 35:20And so then they'll prepare a scope of work for the insured and the insured will be able to say yes, or the insurance carrier will be to say, yes, we approve of this, please help me.
- 35:29So the next step then is usually where they'll kick off.
- 35:33They'll provide the insured with a list of instructions for what to do next.
- 35:38They'll start collecting forensics data.
- 35:40they'll try to immediately lock down the insurance network to eliminate persistence, which is the ability for the threat actor to get in and out to stay in the network.
- 35:53And they'll deploy what we call endpoint monitoring solutions, like a CrowdStrike or Sentinel-1 or something like that, so they can monitor every single endpoint on the network to see if there is persistence or movement or things like that to make sure that that threat actor is no longer in the So, you know, one of the things that is important is speed, because if it's a known vulnerability that hit them, then there's up to, you 100 other threat actors out there that might also see it, and they may be racing to get it.
- 36:23We've seen cases where there's been double encryption.
- 36:26Two threat actors have hit the same shirt at the same time.
- 36:29Because criminals talk, right?
- 36:31And if they get, as soon as they're inside your network, they are on their forums on the dark web.
- 36:37Going I'm in I mean I mean this is what we're getting right and then other ones find out about it.
- 36:43Yeah, they use the same the same tools as well.
- 36:46So after the scoping call you know you'll set up.
- 36:49You know a set of calls that will take place multiple times per day every day.
- 36:55You know like how what's going on?
- 36:57Do you are your backups ready to go?
- 36:59Are they are they are they viable so?
- 37:05One other thing that you'll want to do is set up an out of band communication with with all the key players with forensics, with counsel, all the insurers who want to be involved in the situation, because why is that important, John?
- 37:20So just just interrupt.
- 37:21Like having an out of band communication is important because we don't know at this point whether they're watching what you're saying.
- 37:28Like you can't use your work email because you don't know if they're on your work email.
- 37:32Correct.
- 37:33Correct.
- 37:33That's absolutely right.
- 37:35and so then the next step is to, kind of diverge on multiple, concurrent paths.
- 37:43So one path is the forensic output.
- 37:47So you'll have a root cause analysis by the forensic team.
- 37:50So there are multiple teams within this provider.
- 37:53So there's a forensics team, there's a restoration team, and then there's a, an intelligence team, a threat intelligence teams that will, they will talk, they will talk to the threat actor.
- 38:01The restoration team focuses only on, Hey, In short, do you have backups?
- 38:05Do you need help?
- 38:06Can we get boots on the ground?
- 38:07Do you need remote help?
- 38:08Things like that.
- 38:09And then the forensics team, they're the ones collecting the forensics data, trying to figure out the root cause analysis and things like that.
- 38:17So one thing that is often that we see a lot of is that maybe all the logging capabilities are not used on an insurance network or their hardware or software or whatever.
- 38:30So one thing we would always suggest is make sure that Insured turns on their logging capabilities on all of their hardware, software, operating systems, applications, and things like that so that the forensics can go back and try to connect the dots.
- 38:46Another thing is if you know you have restoration or backups that you can restore from, don't delete that data.
- 38:54Don't delete the logs.
- 38:55Don't wipe everything.
- 38:57You know, we want to preserve that forensics data so that you know where the root cause was because you're going to want to know how you got hit, why you got hit so that you can remedy that right for going forward so that your security stack is strong.
- 39:11so while there's, know, then we have the dual path of negotiations versus restoration.
- 39:17So if you have backups, great, you'll be able to get back up and running sometimes within a matter of hours and usually a couple of days.
- 39:25And depending on the network, could actually take a few weeks.
- 39:28But you'll want to prioritize.
- 39:30You'll want to know, this is why an incident response plan is important.
- 39:33You want to know exactly what servers do you want backup and running first?
- 39:36Which ones are key business, know, core operation servers that you need?
- 39:42So if you have that, great, you're off and running, you kind of push the negotiations off to the side.
- 39:48You keep them warm because you want to make sure that in case something bad happens and you have the ability to go back to the threat actor, You don't want to pay that ransom, but you want to keep them warm just in case you have to.
- 40:01Right.
- 40:01So if you have to negotiate with them, let's say they actually succeed in deleting your backups or encrypting your backups and you have no other way to restore your network, then you're going to want to negotiate for that decrypter tool.
- 40:20sometimes in your experience, what percentage of small to mid-sized businesses pay a ransom versus don't pay a ransom?
- 40:29It varies.
- 40:29It actually varies from quarter to quarter.
- 40:32But really, we're talking about the decrypter tool, almost all pay.
- 40:38I mean, unless there's another way that they can restore their data, rebuild their network entirely, it's almost all pay if they have to get the decryption tool.
- 40:47But if they don't have to pay to get the decryption tool.
- 40:51I've seen, or we've seen somewhere between 20 and 40 % paying the ransom just for the data suppression.
- 40:59I think- Meaning, even though they're able to get up and running, they still have a copy of the data and they're going to publicize it.
- 41:06So that second level of extortion, they want to keep it from going public.
- 41:11That's And keep in mind that data is out there on the dark web that's only available by the people who- know how to get out there.
- 41:20So, you know, the and the other thing about the change healthcare matter that I thought was a really good point to make is, is that, you know, one thing you have that you have to do is you don't really get, I mean, the proof of deletion of your data after you've paid a ransom for data suppression, essentially, is some screenshots, you never actually get more than that.
- 41:40So you have to trust a threat actor.
- 41:42And in the case of change healthcare, obviously, there was no trust there.
- 41:47The affiliate had the data and used it even though the ransom was initially paid.
- 41:53So two ransoms actually had to be paid.
- 41:56But as you're negotiating, you need to get a couple of things.
- 42:01You need to get proof of life to decrypt, meaning you take a couple of encrypted files, send them to, or you share those with the threat actor.
- 42:08They are able to show you that they're able to decrypt those files.
- 42:13So you're like, okay, good to go.
- 42:15We know that the decrypter works, right?
- 42:17You get proof of data exfiltration, meaning different files from different parts on your network.
- 42:23So you know that they were in the places that they say they were.
- 42:28And that way, you know, okay, well, they took eight terabytes of data and they say they took them from these locations.
- 42:34Okay, it looks like we have to assume that they have it, right?
- 42:36So that's kind of the point of this.
- 42:38And this can take days and it could take hours, it could take days.
- 42:43It just depends on how quickly the threat actor responds.
- 42:48So one thing to note, whether you negotiate or not, whether you store from backups or by purchasing the decrypter tool, it's going to be a lengthy process.
- 43:00One of the misguiding beliefs out there is that you pay the ransom and the lights come on.
- 43:08That's not true.
- 43:08You're going to have to rebuild your network, restore your network.
- 43:12You're to have to decrypt that data, which depending on the amount of data can take a long time.
- 43:18And then, you know, set your network back up again and off you go.
- 43:21So it's no faster than restoring from backups in my experience.
- 43:27So a couple of questions, John.
- 43:29So regardless of whether somebody has cyber insurance, if they do, then.
- 43:36you guys have the resources and you guys will be doing this.
- 43:39If somebody goes without cyber insurance or goes without enough cyber insurance, then they have to do all of this.
- 43:45Like this stuff has to be done no matter what.
- 43:47Right?
- 43:48Like these are the steps that occur post breach, regardless of whether your insurance company foots the bill or not.
- 43:56And then the other thing is I I've heard some small business leaders say like, well, what do I care if my data gets leaked on the dark web?
- 44:04Nobody goes there.
- 44:06It's like, no, no, that's not true.
- 44:08Like they will go.
- 44:09There's a couple of things depending on your vertical, right?
- 44:12You still have to notify certain organizations.
- 44:16So it becomes surface web stuff.
- 44:19So everybody finds out, but also mainstream media monitors that stuff because it's newsworthy.
- 44:25They're looking for stories and security researchers and mainstream media.
- 44:31As soon as a breach in a leak site gets published, That's news.
- 44:36And so they will go and report on it.
- 44:39So it makes it bleeds its way over to that 4 % of the service web where most of us live.
- 44:45And that's part of the legal analysis piece on number five is that once you determine through the forensic analysis, through the purchase of the data, through getting those keys from the insured or sorry, from the threat actor, you're gonna know mostly what the...
- 45:04what the universe of the data was that they took, and you're gonna have to figure out what's in there, right?
- 45:09You're gonna have to figure out, it client data that I have a contract with that I have to notify that person because of a contract?
- 45:17Is it PII or PHI or other data that is regulated by the states or federal government that requires notification and maybe even credit or identity monitoring for those individuals?
- 45:34But regardless of whether or not you pay the ransom for the data suppression, let's say they don't publish it on the dark web because you paid X amount, you're still going to have those legal obligations.
- 45:45So we usually advise against payment for data suppression because those obligations still exist.
- 45:53You still have a limit to your policy.
- 45:56You want to use those as expeditiously as possible.
- 46:00whether it's through notification, whether it's through future liability because of a class action, because they're becoming more common.
- 46:10If you have to notify a population of more than a thousand or 10,000 people, the odds of getting hit by a class action go up the more people that you have to notify.
- 46:24really, there's the first day, there's the second day, and then three, four weeks later, you get the legal compliance, you get the whole picture kind of put together.
- 46:34What was the root cause?
- 46:36What did they take?
- 46:38What are my legal obligations?
- 46:40And what might my liability be going forward?
- 46:44Excellent.
- 46:45So in terms of segueing over to how do we reduce this?
- 46:48Because this sounds, and it is, pretty arduous endeavor, like once it ran somewhere.
- 46:57or a data breach occurs.
- 46:59There's a lot of factors that are involved.
- 47:03let's go over to, actually, if we can move on to like, are some of the best practices that the industry recommends?
- 47:14when we, I'm interested to hear from Nathan and John, like these best practices, when organizations do these things, a couple things happen, right?
- 47:25the likelihood of an incident itself happening goes down, right?
- 47:31Is that a fair statement?
- 47:32As well as the fact that the amount of damage, because not all breaches are created equal, the amount of damage, the amount of liability, and the likelihood of whether you wind up in the news, right, goes down also when you do these things.
- 47:48As well as, I would imagine, your insurance premiums too.
- 47:53Yeah, that's absolutely.
- 47:55I mean, something that I've found really helpful in explaining this to new cyber insurance buyers, because everybody's bought property and casualty insurance.
- 48:04You ensure your home, you ensure your car, you ensure your business and putting it in terms that people are accustomed to not having some of these best practices in place is like trying to ensure your house without a roof on it.
- 48:16And that's really the example I use when we're talking about multifactor authentication, all carriers.
- 48:22regardless are requiring some form of multi-factor authentication just to be insurable.
- 48:29So that example seems to resonate with people just because again they're accustomed to the property casualty insurance of insuring their building.
- 48:37And you're exactly right.
- 48:38It makes them a more desirable insured because the practices are there.
- 48:44They've got skin in the game.
- 48:45They're taking action to say, I want to protect my business again, just like in the building reference, you're making sure that the building is in good repair.
- 48:53You're taking care of crack sidewalks.
- 48:54You're replacing damage that might occur.
- 48:58All of those things are the same here when it comes to cyber insurance.
- 49:01Absolutely.
- 49:01And then, you know, updating software is really important.
- 49:05That goes without saying because it's not just new features and benefits or bug fixes, right?
- 49:11It is, you know, security vulnerabilities that are being rolled.
- 49:15And incident response planning, John, isn't that absolutely, absolutely important?
- 49:22when I think of incident response planning and testing of your incident response planning through practices like tabletop exercises, to me, there's a, first of all, it still shocks me that less than 24 % of small and midsize businesses do that.
- 49:39And then to realize that we spent all this time and money and resources building up these great brands, and yet we don't run fire drills.
- 49:47We all had fire drills as a kid.
- 49:49We did that because should there be a fire, we would die and they would show us we have to run down this hall.
- 49:55We have to make a left, not a right.
- 49:57And we have to go do this.
- 49:59Realizing what needs done, hour one, what data needs to be, who needs to do what.
- 50:04It's almost like a living, breathing, racy document.
- 50:07I'm still shocked that most organizations still don't do Absolutely.
- 50:11I'm a big fan of the five P's.
- 50:13if you guys are with that is proper preparation prevents poor performance.
- 50:18I try to tell this to my kids all the time, but yes, have an incident response plan.
- 50:23And if you have insurance, even better, incorporate that into your plan.
- 50:26And that just doesn't mean know who to call.
- 50:28That means know what the next step is and the step after that and the step after that.
- 50:32Because in my world, it's all about speed and efficiency.
- 50:36You can't spend a half a day or two days haggling over a an agreement like a service agreement with a with an outside provider, right?
- 50:45You you have to you have to move.
- 50:47So we have, you know, resources in place who have all worked with each other before.
- 50:52They've all used each other's service agreements before their engagement agreements.
- 50:56So there is no question that they can just move with the speed of light, really.
- 51:02because people still reuse passwords, right?
- 51:06We're like, before the push was always You know, you use a better password, make it more complex, et cetera.
- 51:13Right now, NIST has come out and said length matters.
- 51:16So that's good.
- 51:17But what most people do, they're like, I got a really good one, but I'm using it on everything.
- 51:22Right.
- 51:22And that's not good.
- 51:24Right.
- 51:24We can't do that.
- 51:25But even if we did that, having multifactor authentication and not falling for the social engineering trick of multifactor authentication fatigue when they steal your data, they buy those credentials, and then they keep spamming you with all these notifications.
- 51:43If you didn't try and log in, don't ever approve that.
- 51:46But having multifactor authentication is absolutely critical.
- 51:48Well, back to your point real quick on testing your IR plan.
- 51:54We have had situations where insurers think they have backups, and they go to their backup provider, and for whatever reason, they're not there.
- 52:02Right, they haven't been tested.
- 52:04If they had tested their backups, A, you know, know, if they're good or not, and B, you know, how long it would take you to restore if you had to use them, right?
- 52:12Those are very important pieces of information to have.
- 52:16And then back to a point on software and updating your software, you know, we're seeing faster and faster responses to those, releases of those known vulnerabilities.
- 52:28So we've had situations where a notice goes out on Friday and there's ransomware hitting the system by Monday.
- 52:35Right.
- 52:36Because they also notify the bad guys.
- 52:40So let's wrap this up.
- 52:42We're going to send this out to everybody, but let's get to some of the Q &A and some of the questions.
- 52:49Thanks, David.
- 52:50We had some great questions come in.
- 52:52So I just want to make sure we had time for this.
- 52:56It's almost becoming normal for big businesses getting hacked and then all of our information is leaked on the dark web.
- 53:02I don't see how we can actually protect from this thoughts.
- 53:06I think that we may have just kind of answered that a little bit.
- 53:10you protect from it on this page.
- 53:13That's the answer.
- 53:15I know one thing I do.
- 53:16I have credit freezes with all three.
- 53:19Yeah, I mean on a personal basis we have a whole bunch of suggestions, but freeze your credit.
- 53:26Every American, it's free.
- 53:27It used to be hard to do.
- 53:28It's super easy.
- 53:30Freeze your credit because that protects a lot of people.
- 53:34And then for organizations, these are the best practices.
- 53:38What happens when a fake to breach notification letter arrives and you sign up to credit monitoring with your legitimate information into a bad website?
- 53:49You have been socially engineered.
- 53:53Next question.
- 53:53No, what you need to do is you need to.
- 53:58there are actually sites that before you do that, you can put the URL, you can put the website in for that to see if it's a scam website.
- 54:06So there's a lot of free resources where you can check that.
- 54:11But should that occur, then you need to have credit monitoring.
- 54:15And again, if you freeze your credit, you're going to be fine.
- 54:17Freezing your credit does not stop you from being able to use credit cards, et cetera.
- 54:22It's just that if you want to take a new loan out, you just have to unfreeze your credit, have them run your credit score, and then refreeze your credit.
- 54:28It's that simple.
- 54:29But they cannot damage your credit or take money out in your name, take loans out in your name, et cetera, when your credit is frozen.
- 54:37And from a personal aspect, there's a lot of tools and resources out there that people may not be aware of.
- 54:42Look at your credit cards.
- 54:43Sometimes there's a service provided with your credit card or your bank.
- 54:47accounts might have something available to you like a credit monitoring service or the resources available to you that you can access that are included in your subscriptions already.
- 54:59Absolutely.
- 55:00Any other questions?
- 55:01Yes.
- 55:02Are there any government agencies actively monitoring the dark web?
- 55:07Yes.
- 55:08Okay.
- 55:10Would you like to know which ones?
- 55:12And I have a question, a follow up.
- 55:13Yeah, I would say, I would say a lot of them are.
- 55:17So I know the NSA does, FBI does, CISA does, like almost all of them that you would want doing it are monitoring.
- 55:28The problem is, is we know who the members are of the cyber crime gangs.
- 55:34We just can't get to them because we don't have extradition treaties in place.
- 55:41So that might answer the follow up.
- 55:43If so, why wasn't change healthcare tipped off before the breach happened?
- 55:47Well, yeah, because I don't know.
- 55:50I haven't been involved.
- 55:52I will tell I will say this.
- 55:54You can get my email through here.
- 55:56Reach out to me in about four to six months, because as the class action lawsuits become public and the depositions occur, then we'll be able to answer that question.
- 56:06That's one of the questions I.
- 56:10When you pay for data suppression, what percentage of your data is still leaked?
- 56:17Great question.
- 56:18John, I'm going to turn that one over to you.
- 56:21I guess that gets into can you trust the cyber criminals when you give them 22 million bucks not to still sell your data?
- 56:29So the answer is your data is still leaked.
- 56:33payment for data suppression just stops them publishing it on the dark web.
- 56:38it does not change the fact that they got in and stole it in the first place.
- 56:44based upon the fact that it was accessed, taken, exfiltrated, whatever you want to call it, you already have those legal obligations to notify everyone.
- 56:53So you're going to have to tell people that this happened.
- 56:56So then back to does it get leaked anyway?
- 57:02I don't know.
- 57:03I mean, there's some evidence out there that you can't trust these threat actors that, you the FBI or international law enforcement has taken down some of these groups and has found evidence that they actually don't believe what they say they're going to believe.
- 57:18So it really comes down to shocking that you can't trust a criminal, but it really comes down to trusting a criminal.
- 57:24And how much do you want to pay to do that when you could use those funds in shoring up your security stack or preparing for liability from customers, clients, et cetera.
- 57:39One more question in 60 seconds or less and then I want to get to our collaborative whiteboard session.
- 57:46Once data is leaked on the dark web, what should you do?
- 57:52If you haven't been talking to counsel, you're going to need counsel.
- 57:57mean, John, why don't you address that one?
- 58:00Yeah, I mean, that's the right answer.
- 58:03You're going to need to contact, well, you probably need to contact your insurance carrier.
- 58:07But so I'm assuming at this point, you've already been in, you you've had a ransomware incident, you've had some kind of email compromise where you know your data is about to be leaked on the dark web.
- 58:17In that case, you've already got a process in place and good for you because you contacted your insurance carrier and you've gotten all the resources in place.
- 58:25If you just find out out of the blue that your data is on the dark web, call your insurance carrier, contact a data breach privacy attorney that specializes in this because then they can tell you what your legal obligations are arising from it because, and you're probably going to want to do a forensic investigation and hope that you still have logs going back far enough that can tell you how they got in.
- 58:47Right.
- 58:48Cause you should be able to, because you should be able to find where that happened.
- 58:52Right.
- 58:52There, there, there will be a digital breadcrumb of, of where that happened.
- 58:57Yeah.
- 58:58Yep.
- 58:59So, so one of the things that, that we're offering every, all the attendees is really a roadmap and there's no cost, no strings attached, nothing salesy, but we're going to walk organizations and we do this pretty regularly where we will identify best practices.
- 59:16in your vertical, in your specialty, identify what you're doing, find cost effective ways.
- 59:23It doesn't have to be anything that we necessarily sell, but find ways where you can implement these policies, identify the gaps, and then give you a roadmap so that you can actually, you know, set a game plan out a year, three years, short term and long term to really improve and evolve your security.
- 59:45We do this as a public service because we are under attack.
- 59:51We've been under attack for over 10 years and it's been something that is long standing and there's a lot of things that don't involve us, which is why we are.
- 1:00:00But the point is, is we really need to help each other kind of improve our digital hygiene as organizations.
- 1:00:08And so we offer this, we encourage everybody to take advantage of it.
- 1:00:13I guarantee.
- 1:00:14you will get value.
- 1:00:19Thank you all so much for coming today.
- 1:00:22We really appreciate your time.
- 1:00:24We value your time.
- 1:00:27We hope to hear from you, some of you all, about a collaborative whiteboard session.
- 1:00:31Keep an eye out in your inboxes for a slide deck and a copy of the reporting.
- 1:00:38Should be fairly soon, today or tomorrow.
- 1:00:40Excellent.
- 1:00:41John, Nathan, thank you very much for lending your expertise today.
- 1:00:44Thank you.
- 1:00:45You are welcome, and thank you for having me.
- 1:00:47Appreciate it.
- 1:00:48Thanks, Ashley.
- 1:00:49You did a great job.
- 1:00:50Thanks.
- 1:00:50Bye.
- 1:00:51Thanks, everyone.