Ransomware and the Toll it Takes on Trucking

Fleet supervisors never want to experience the pain, and potentially crippling events, that come with seeing a message flash that reveals they are a victim of a ransomware attack. Internet experts agree that ransomware breaches continue to grow as the number-one threat to organizations and businesses worldwide. NMFTA’s Director of Enterprise Security, Antwan Banks, as moderated the Ransomware and the Toll it Takes on Trucking webinar presented by Guidacent’s Director of ThreatRecon Cybersecurity Services and CISO, Drew Williams.

Since 2016, over 4,000 ransomware attacks have occurred daily in the U.S. Historically, ransomware has been delivered via email attachments or, more recently, using direct network access obtained through unsecure VPN accounts or software vulnerabilities. But now we are seeing newer, savvier ways for bad actors to infect a company with ransomware. 

With the rise of DemonWare activity, criminals are now blending Ransomware with Insider Threat to create hybrid ransomware as a service that targets companies by identifying and enticing disgruntled workers with large sums of money; this is not the first instance we have heard about employees accepting pay to place ransomware into their companies. One infamous case was the million dollars promised to a Tesla employee, but luckily, authorities identified and arrested a Russian ransomware spreader. 

The big questions now are, how widespread are these targeted attacks? And is this a series of isolated incidents or a future trend? 

Meet Your Speakers

Drew Williams is Director of ThreatRecon Cybersecurity Services and CISO at Guidacent. He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. He launched one of the IT security industry’s first Host Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS). Drew contributed to the original HIPAA framework. He is a former product development manager for the first commercial SIEM platform. He co-developed one of the first commercially funded hacker research teams (Symantec SWAT) and funded the initial BlackHat hacker conference. Drew formerly hosted “Hacker Halted Asia” and produced the “Two-minute Warnings” cybersecurity video series.