Getting ready for our Cybersecurity & Data Privacy webinar

Sharing some of our thoughts, notes and sources ahead of our next webinar

Photo by Dan Nelson on Unsplash

As we get ready for an upcoming webinar for our Cybersecurity & Data Privacy investment theme and index with our partner, Rize ETF, which offers the corresponding ETF in Europe. We can easily say that once again, cybersecurity spending expectations are shaping up to be conservative relative to what was called for coming into 2022.

The “why” behind that is the continued explosion in ransomware as criminal organizations continue to up their skill set and the expanding surface area for cyber attacks due to cloud adoptions, the burgeoning IoT market, and the increasing amounts of workers working from anywhere. Meanwhile, a new report from the Government Accountability Office warned private insurance companies are increasingly backing out of covering damages from major cyberattacks — leaving American businesses facing “catastrophic financial loss.” 

To give readers of Thematic Signals+ an idea as to what we’ll be discussing on the webinar, here are some ideas:

• AMD targeted by RansomHouse, cybercrimes claim to have '450Gb' in stolen data

• Businesses risk ‘catastrophic financial loss’ from cyberattacks, US watchdog warns

• Ransomware Volume Nearly Doubles 2021 Totals in a Single Quarter

• Ransomware is the biggest global cyber threat. And the attacks are still evolving

• Many Russian Cyberattacks Failed in the First Months of Ukraine War, Study Says

• Hackers Steal $100 Million by Exploiting Crypto’s Weak Link

• Cyberattack Forces Iran Steel Company to Halt Production

• FBI warning: Crooks are using deepfakes to apply for remote tech jobs

• ZuoRAT Malware Hijacking Home-Office Routers to Spy on Targeted Networks

And while we do more than a fair amount of reading, we’re also doing quite a bit of listening as well. One of the more entertaining but still informative listens was to The Journal’s Hack Me If You Can podcast series that tells the story of Dmitry Smilyanets, the man who managed one of the most notorious hacking teams to ever come out of Russia. Across the three episodes, there are a number of nuggets to be had including one about ransomware as a service market. Here’s a link to the first episode on Spotify, but you can listen to it on other podcasting platforms as well.

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