2020’s biggest innovators? Hackers and cyber-criminals, again, says Darktrace

November 13, 2020 TH Author

Webcast This year has turned corporate IT upside down, scuppering digital transformation plans as tech teams struggle to keep the lights on and support a suddenly remote workforce.

The one comforting thought is “at least everyone else is in the same boat.” Well, not quite. One group has taken full advantage of this year of chaos and confusion to unleash a tidal wave of innovation.

Unfortunately, that group is the hacker and cyber attacker fraternity, which has spotted that the sudden switch to remote working arrangements has delivered them a much wider attack surface to target, while security pros are stretched thinner than ever.

At the same time as they have stepped into the breaches opened up by an increasingly diffused and corporate workforce, the bad guys have taken advantage of an almost universal thirst for information and reassurance with ever more creative spear phishing and whaling attacks.

So how can you defend against these ruthless people with an uncanny ability to understand exactly what buttons to press to tempt your unsuspecting workforce into letting them into your systems and networks?

By thinking like them before you start to fight back, which is what we’ll be showing you how to do in our webcast How I’d Attack You, on November 18 at 0900 PT (1200 ET, 1700 GMT).

The Register’s own one-man attack surface Tim Phillips will be joined by Dan Fein and Mariana Pereira of cyber defence specialists Darktrace.

Dan and Mariana will explain how they would plan an attack in 2020, before showing how you can use that information to better plan your own defence.

They’ll show how cyber crims have finessed their reconnaissance techniques, taking full advantage of email, social media and implicit profiling, to prepare the ground for highly targeted, and effective, attacks using fearware and payloadless emails.

And if that’s only increasing your own fear levels, don’t worry, as they’ll be talking you through the defensive techniques that can blunt the attackers’ best efforts.

Darktrace emerged from a collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians and cyber security experts with government intelligence backgrounds, and its AI powered security tools are used by government departments, enterprises, and even Premiership football teams. So you know they’ve learned a thing or two about how cybercriminals think and act.

You can tap into all this knowledge from the secure location of your choice. All you need to do is <a target=”_blank” href=”register here for the webcast, brought to you by Darktrace, and we’ll update your diary and remind you to tune in.