MARCH 20198IN MY OPINIONCriminals: Motivated Primarily by ProfitIt is a different day and age today than it was 20 years ago. The advent of big data has given rise to the big data criminal whose only goal is to disrupt for personal or ideological gain. The threat is comprised of three major threat actor groups: criminal, hacktivist, and nation-state. The criminal is motivated primarily by profit. The hacktivist desires to make some political or social statement or to create a negative impact due to some social or political cause. Nation-state actors are generally motivated by espionage or a covert political statement and want to inflict damage, cause cyberwar or serve some other selfish interest. Some would include a category for corporate espionage, but that can fall under a criminal profit motive.The most consistent threat for most companies is the criminal threat. The bad guys want money, and if you have something they can monetize, you can bet some opportunistis thinking about how to get to you. Criminals have become more efficient, also. As an example, ransomware is an attack that can be launched indiscriminately with the criminal not needing to do anything until contacted by the victim. This type of attack has grown from a nuisance to a serious threat to enterprise file systems.Need to Build Resilient OrganizationIn the face of increasing threats to IT, OT and IoT, security and risk leaders need to build resilient organizations that can withstand attacks and continue to attain enterprise objectives. What is your take on managing risk and delivering security in a digital world? As long as there is technology and information, threats will emerge and morph. The criminal will continue to find ways around our defenses, and we must be in a continuous improvement mode. But it is important that we stick to the fundamentals of the security profession. We must conduct or refresh our enterprise risk assessment, define risk tolerance, and tune our Building Resiliency against Increasing Threats to IT, OT and IoTBy Tim Callahan, SVP, Global Chief Security Officer, Aflac [NYSE: AFL]Tim Callahan
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