Eugene Kaspersky: The Hackers Aren't Winning

AN INTERVIEW WITH

Eugene Kaspersky
World-renowned cybersecurity expert, CEO, Co-founder of Kaspersky Labs and keynote speaker at the upcoming 2015 ACFE European Fraud Conference in London, March 22-24

Why do you think it is important for anti-fraud professionals to be up to speed on the latest cybercrime and cybersecurity?

Keeping up with (ideally keeping ahead of) cybercrime is essential if we’re serious about providing effective protection against cyberthreats for financial institutions and their clients. The sophistication of malware used by criminals to attack banks is on the rise, and we’re now facing a very dangerous situation: the stealthy, cutting-edge malicious tools that were once only to be found in state-sponsored espionage campaigns are now available to criminals as well. We’re now seeing government-grade advanced persistent threats (APTs) used to attack banks to steal money. This means that investment in IT security — including in the education of security specialists and in forensics — is vital for building effective protection for any organization that could be targeted by cyberfraud.

What advice do you have for those working in fraud detection and prevention who simply feel overwhelmed and outnumbered by cyberthreats?

Don’t panic, and do your job! There are many reasons to be paranoid when you’re in the security business, as you have to understand all possible attack scenarios, and there are admittedly many of them. It’s very important to always learn to be able to address this growing number of threats: knowledge transfer, training and the ability to use the industry’s best practices to confront the attackers are vital. It’s either impossible or very costly to build 100 percent secure cyber-protection, so the goal should be to make that protection as robust and as strong as possible to make a hack more expensive than a physical, real-world robbery. 

What do you most hope attendees will take away from your address?

Despite all the threats, we can be optimistic: I think the hackers aren’t winning, and we in the security business aren’t losing the battle. We can provide very high levels of protection if we continue to learn, develop our defensive technologies, conduct regular security audits and generally take cybersecurity seriously.

Read more about Kaspersky and other keynote speakers at ACFE.com/European. Register by February 20 to save EUR 125.

A Look Inside: ACFE Asia-Pacific Conference offers speakers with stories you could only imagine

AUTHOR’S POST

Mandy Moody, CFE
ACFE Social Media Specialist

I am not going to lie; I often like to think of my life as a long, dramatic Hollywood movie (key word: think). At times, it feels like a drama (thanks to my two-year old). Other times it feels like a comedy (I am known to tell a few jokes at the expense of my friends and family). And, on the rare occasion, it feels like an incredible tragedy (a missed promotion, the loss of a friend, the realization that I cannot be “Mom of the Year” all of the time). But, for me these genres are just examples of the way my life feels; not how it is. For Michael Woodford, former Olympus CEO and whistleblower, his life over the past five years actually is like (and will soon be) a blockbuster movie. His story of exposing a $1.7 billion fraud with rumored connections to the Japanese mafia sounds like a Hollywood thriller, a thriller he will share during his keynote address at the upcoming 2014 ACFE Asia-Pacific Fraud Conference in Hong Kong, November 16-18. Hear a clip below from Woodford speaking at the ACFE Global Fraud Conference in 2012.

Woodford, however, will not be the only speaker giving an inside look at his life. Below is the full list of speakers telling their stories:

• Michael Woodford, Olympus Whistleblower, UK
  After 30 years with Olympus, Woodford confronted its Board of Directors on multiple occasions asking for answers to financial discrepancies and even delivered a commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers investigation report. He was abruptly fired Oct. 14, 2011, by the company’s executive board because of what the board cited as a “management culture clash.” Just one month later, Olympus officials publicly admitted to the U.S. FBI and UK Serious Fraud Office to having paid fraudulent advisory fees in a decade-long cover up valuing $1.7 billion. 
• Albert Hui, CISA, CISM GCFA, GCFE, Principal Consultant, Security Ronin, Hong Kong
  Having spent years breaking and protecting information technology systems for investment banks and government and national critical infrastructures, Hui is an expert on high-sensitivity mission-critical systems security.
• David Barboza, Correspondent, The New York Times, China
  In 2013, Barboza was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting “for his striking exposure of corruption at high levels of the Chinese government, including billions in secret wealth owned by relatives of the prime minister, well documented work published in the face of heavy pressure from the Chinese officials.”
• Paul Chung, Deputy Head of the Financial Investigations Division of Narcotics Bureau, Hong Kong Police, Hong Kong
  Chung is an AML expert with more than 15 years of experience on financial investigation and financial intelligence handling. He also has experience in handling complex fraud investigation, including boiler room fraud, franchise fraud, LC fraud, instalment fraud and insurance fraud.
• D. Bruce Dorris, J.D., CFE, CPA, CVA, Vice President and Program Director, ACFE
  Dorris is the Vice President and Program Director for the ACFE. As an Assistant District Attorney for the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office in Shreveport, La., Dorris created and was the Director of its Financial Crimes Screening Section. He has testified numerous times before legislative committees and was a frequent lecturer with prosecutor and accountant training associations.

You can find more information about the 2014 ACFE Asia-Pacific Fraud Conference at ACFE.com/AsiaPac. Early registration ends tomorrow!

Keynotes Announced for ACFE Global Fraud Conference in San Antonio, Texas

AUTHOR’S POST

Mandy Moody, CFE
ACFE Social Media Specialist

“No matter where you are in your career, you will benefit from this conference.” “To have such a wide variety of topics and individuals is truly unique.” “There is something for everybody.” These are just a handful of the comments I recently heard when conducting video interviews with some of our ACFE faculty about the ACFE Global Fraud Conference. I hear feedback like this regularly, some solicited and some not. The selection of concurrent sessions, Pre- and Post-Conference sessions and keynotes is diverse; it spans industries, job levels, interests and even career goals. This year we will have more than 70 concurrent sessions to choose from and five keynote sessions I am excited to announce.

Here is the lineup so far:

• Louis Freeh, Former Director, FBI, “Corporate America's Top Investigator”
  Dubbed “the singularly best-suited person in America to run the FBI” by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Freeh has been heralded for transforming the FBI into a global security institution. During his eight-year tenure, he visited 62 countries and met with more than 2,000 foreign leaders while increasing the FBI’s focus on counterintelligence, cybercrime and electronic surveillance. Freeh has kept his investigation skills sharp through his involvement in several high-profile cases with Penn State, MF Global and BP.
• Peter Eigen, Founder, Transparency International
  Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen has worked in economic development and governance for several decades and has led initiatives for better global governance and the fight against corruption.
• Martin Kenney, International Asset Recovery Expert
  Kenney's work as a global asset chaser has resulted in recovering billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains from fraudsters; he is widely regarded as a groundbreaker in his field.
• Marc Goodman, Global Strategist, Cyber Security Expert, Senior Advisor, Interpol Steering Committee on Information Technology Crime
  Over the past 20 years, Goodman has built his expertise in security threats such as cybercrime and cyber terrorism, working with organizations such as Interpol, the United Nations and NATO.
• Dinesh Thakur, Ranbaxy Whistleblower
  Eighty percent of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. contain foreign sourced ingredients and more than 40 percent of the prescriptions are fully manufactured overseas. Former Ranbaxy Laboratories (an India based pharma company) executive Dinesh Thakur discovered that the company was falsifying drug data and violating current good manufacturing and laboratory practices in order to gain competitive advantage in the U.S. market. His eight-year collaboration with the U.S. FDA and the Department of Justice to unravel the dangerous fraud led to a 2013 guilty plea by Ranbaxy and a groundbreaking $500 million settlement, the largest  of its kind against a generic drug manufacturer.

I look forward to seeing you and nearly 3,000 anti-fraud professionals from around the world at the 25th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference in San Antonio, June 15-20, 2014. Find session topics, networking details and more at FraudConference.com. Don’t forget, last year’s conference sold out; register early by April 1 so you don’t miss your chance to attend.