5 experts: Cybercriminals want your data and ransom money

Strong cybersecurity defense is crucial for companies and organizations to keep interlopers out of their computer networks.

Here is what the experts say:

1. “They are constantly trying to evolve their tactics to make their cyberattacks more devastating and more elusive,” said Gordon Elder III, founder and owner of No Name IT of Dayton.

2. “If you’ve got a virus on that (home) computer and you hook it up to the network, you’re going to disperse that virus onto the company’s network. That’s the biggest concern about using your own computer,” said Eric Brown, a managing partner at D9 Technologies in Englewood.

3. “We absolutely predict (third party attacks) will grow because they are easier. Why go after 500 entities separately when I can go to one, infiltrate their system and get access to 500 organizations’ information,” said Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center.

4. “We’re right back to the arms race. The bad guys are going to be coming up with new tricks all the time,” said Dave Salisbury, director of the center for cybersecurity and data intelligence at the University of Dayton.

5. “Emails are such an open door for a lot of attackers. There’s actually a lot of thought that goes into how they write up the email that they send out,” said Kyle Jones, associate professor and chairman of the computer science and information technology department at Sinclair Community College. “An attacker might spend three or four months doing recon before they do the attack.”

Here are links to the full Dayton Daily News series on cybersecurity:

Companies skimp on cybersecurity defense at their own peril

Cybercriminals want your data and ransom money

Cybercriminals make eye-popping ransom demands

Thieves stealing passwords can get ‘keys to the kingdom’

More than a billion people impacted in top U.S. data breaches and leaks in 2021

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