Former FBI Agent Shares Cybercrime Trends with Eric O'Neill

Working from home has increased the ability for cyber criminals to exploit companies. Listen on for how to be sure that the email you received isn't from someone impersonating someone else. Today's guest is Eric O'Neill. Eric is a security expert and author that presents keynotes internationally about espionage, national security, cyber security, fraud, corporate diligence and defense, and of course, hacking. Eric has worked as an FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence operative, national security attorney, and a corporate security consultant. He founded The Georgetown Group, a premier investigative and security business firm. Eric is also the national security strategist for Carbon Black, the leader in next gen endpoint security and serves on the general council for global communities and international security.

Show Notes:

• [1:05] - Eric shares his background and how he got involved in cybersecurity. He describes his previous role in the FBI.
• [2:47] - Moving on after his career in the FBI, Eric currently wears many different hats in various roles.
• [4:58] - Using his interest in hacking, he was able to catch the biggest FBI spy in history.
• [6:48] - Everything changed about how we work since the pandemic.
• [7:46] - In many cases, people were working and kids were learning from mobile devices. We weren't ready for this to happen.
• [9:09] - The massive increase in people working from home, increased the number of attacks.
• [10:25] - Eric shares some statistics of reported cyber attacks in the last couple of years.
• [11:38] - Romance scams are the second-highest attack trend since the start of the pandemic.
• [12:50] - One of the positives that came from this change to remote, is in hiring talent from around the world.
• [14:10] - Eric thinks we will see more scams of people impersonating CEOs or higher ups in a company.
• [16:27] - Passwords are useless without multi-factor authentication.
• [18:03] - SMS authentication isn't great, but it's better than nothing.
• [19:53] - Eric shares how people can mine data they purchase from the dark web and how easy it could be.
• [22:48] - Cyber criminals want to take down an entire critical infrastructure.
• [24:42] - Criminals are getting much more clever in throwing people into chaos by attacking critical infrastructure.
• [25:32] - Eric believes that cyber attacks will be the method of attack in the next major war.
• [28:05] - He uses the example of the colonial pipeline to demonstrate what chaos these attacks can create.
• [30:10] - There is some speculation of possible attacks on critical infrastructure and the possibility of them maintaining presence.
• [33:19] - Chris shares the issues with power in his area.
• [35:25] - Jokingly but accurately, Eric shares that your children are great hackers.
• [38:42] - Some apps change the location of numbers for entering a PIN so people can't pick up patterns.
• [40:54] - There are some medical devices that could be compromised.
• [42:50] - The average person doesn't think about the ways someone can have malicious intent.
• [44:41] - Cyber espionage is definitely a problem, but cybercrime is what the average person needs to be aware of.
• [46:09] - Don't click on links. Known vulnerabilities are the most commonly successful attack.
• [48:20] - The Dark Web is the third largest economy in the world.
  

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