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.