Can Blockchain Tech Block Cybercrimes?
The Problem: Cyber Crime
Many experts are saying that Cyber Crime is the greatest threat to modern civilization. Cyber Crime does not discriminate. It’s affecting you, your family, your job, your community, your country. This is a Techidemic! If you have a device with a power button, you’re affected, and your device is infected.
What Is The Definition Of Cyber Crime? Here is one definition from Techopedia:
“Cybercrime is defined as a crime in which a computer is the object of the crime (hacking, phishing, spamming) or is used as a tool to commit an offense (child pornography, hate crimes). Cybercriminals may use computer technology to access personal information, business trade secrets or use the internet for exploitative or malicious purposes. Criminals can also use computers for communication and document or data storage. Criminals who perform these illegal activities are often referred to as hackers”.
What Is The Definition Of Cyber Security?
“Cyber security or information technology security are the techniques of protecting computers, networks, programs and data from unauthorized access or attacks that are aimed for exploitation… Network security includes activities to protect the usability, reliability, integrity and safety of the network.”
What’s Our National Grade With Cyber Security In Stopping Cyber Crime?
Grade: F
According to the FTC by the end of 2013 we had 250,000 complaints of ID Theft reported. By the end of 2018 these numbers increased 6000+% to over 16 million! And 2019 is getting worse…FAST! What can you do about it? Goto: smartcommunitytech.com to learn more.
Take A Look At A Few Of These Statistics:
In August 2016, Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that cybercrime will cost the world $6 Trillion (with a T) annually by the year 2021! Yes, per year. This is up from $3 Trillion in 2015.
“Hello Houston! We have a problem”…(but this one is on Earth!)
· In 2018 Cisco blocked 7 Trillion threats.
· This is 20 Billion per day which is over 116,000 per second!
· That’s a fast-growing crime and beyond most human minds to comprehend.
That’s the point, Cybercrime is growing so fast it’s beyond human understanding, it’s beyond human intelligence. It is now taking artificial intelligence (robots) to solve these threats…just to keep up.
Why Should This Matter To You? Pay Attention, My Fellow American.
· What if our aging U.S. Congress (the average age of a Senator and Representative is 59) is overly consumed with Russia taking out Facebook ads to alter an election, instead of your security?
· What if the divisive attitude between Democrats and Republicans puts you at cyber risk?
· What if the new World War threat is not nuclear missiles…it’s a few clicks of a mouse?
· What if political agendas and inflated bank accounts were more important than protecting your data?
· Do you think the enemies of the U.S. and free world know what matters to you?
· What if your privacy mattered to you?
What If Technology Became More Powerful Than Nuclear Missiles?
Have you seen what is happening in Baltimore? That is child’s play compared to what is around the corner. And what is being considered by our foes. Threats are not about bombs anymore, they’re about buttons.
WARNING: We better stop worrying about Donald Trump and focus on bigger problems. Have we become so enamored with judging a human being, that we have forgotten the world is at risk? We need a new problem and we need a new technology to fix that problem. Companies like Smart Community Technologies are creating these new protective blankets and fences for you, your family, your community, your company, your country.
Nathan Rothschild said, ”Give me control of a Nation’s economy and I care not who write its laws”.
Experts say that Cybercrime “will represent the greatest transfer of wealth in world history….and become more profitable for thieves than the global trade of all major illegal drugs…combined!” Robert Herjavek says, “this dramatic rise in damage costs only reinforces the sharp increase in the number of organizations unprepared for a cyber-attack.”
Back to Baltimore, the Use Case For “Hacking For Dummies”. 1000s of cities and countries all over the world are next in line, just waiting to be hacked, because they don’t have a Risk Assessment Plan & Threat Analysis form companies like Smart Community Technologies, of Atlanta, Georgia.
Cyber-attacks are the fastest growing crime in the U.S. and the world by far:
- The Marriott breach near the end of 2018 exposed over 500 million user accounts.
- The Yahoo attack (largest ever) was recalculated to over 3 Billion accounts.
- The Equifax Breach in 2017 affected over 145 million customers.
A special agent to the FBI told the Wall Street Journal that every American citizen should expect that all of their data (personally identifiable information) has been stolen and is now on the dark web.
What is a DDoS attack? DDoS is short for Distributed Denial of Service. DDoS is a type of DOS attack where multiple compromised systems, which are often infected with a Trojan are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Victims of a DDoS attack consist of both the end targeted system and all systems maliciously used and controlled by the hacker in the distributed attack.
How DDoS Attacks Work
In a DDoS attack, the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources — potentially hundreds of thousands or more. This effectively makes it impossible to stop the attack simply by blocking a single IP address; plus, it is very difficult to distinguish legitimate user traffic from attack traffic when spread across so many points of origin.
Robert Herjavek, the famous shark (mentioned above and one of the good guys in the fight, just wrote a new book entitled You Don’t Have to Be a Shark: Creating Your Own Success
As CEO and Founder of the Herjavek Group, his company does outstanding work in helping fight the forces of evil. Robert likes to tell people that his real job is being Batman in real life. He constantly is fighting the bad guys who are far from Jokers.
Robert says…” what really worries me though, is that all the hype around cybercrime — the headlines — the breach notices etc. — makes us complacent. The risk is very real, and we can’t allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of inevitability.”
Here are a few more stats and then we will address what many feel is the solution and we better move fast!
· Asia-Pacific companies receive 6 cyber threats every minute, according to Cisco. A Frost & Sullivan study commissioned by Microsoft revealed that the potential economic loss across Asia Pacific due to cybersecurity incidents can hit a staggering $1.745 trillion (USD).
· In a keynote at DevNet Create, Susie Wee, SVP and CTO of Cisco DevNet, shared research from Cybersecurity Ventures that estimates there are 111 billion lines of new software code being produced each year — which introduces potential for a massive number of vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Zero-day exploits alone are predicted to reach one per day by 2021, up from one per week in 2015.
· The FBI reported that the Business Email Compromise (BEC), aka Email Account Compromise (EAC) — a sophisticated scam targeting both businesses and individuals performing wire transfer payments — has cost more than $12.5 billion in losses over the past 4.5 years (as of its last tally through May 2018).
· Less than half of companies globally are sufficiently prepared for a cybersecurity attack, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report that surveyed 3,000 business leaders from more than 80 countries.
· The 5 most cyber-attacked industries over the past 5 years are healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, government, and transportation. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that retail, oil and gas / energy and utilities, media and entertainment, legal, and education (K-12 and higher ed), will round out the top 10 industries for 2019 to 2022.
· Hacking tools and kits for cyberattacks, identity theft, malware, ransomware, and other nefarious purposes have been available in online marketplaces for several years — at price points starting as low as $1 — which makes the cost of entry to a life of cybercrime nearly free.
· Ransomware damage costs are predicted to be 57X more in 2021 than they were in 2015. This makes ransomware the fastest growing type of cybercrime. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has described ransomware as a new business model for cybercrime, and a global phenomenon.
· The modern definition of the word “hack” was first coined at MIT in April 1955. The first known mention of computer (phone) hacking occurred in a 1963 issue of The Tech. Over the past fifty-plus years, the world’s attack surface has evolved from phone systems to so many digitally connected “things” that it’s outpacing our ability to properly secure them.
· The World Wide Web was invented in 1989. The first-ever website went live in 1991. Today there are more than 1.9 billion websites.
· The world’s digital content is expected to grow to 96 zettabytes by 2020 (this is how big a zettabyte is), up from 4 billion terabytes (4 zettabytes) just 3 years ago. With this kind of exponential growth, the opportunities — for innovation, and for cybercrime — are incalculable because data is the building block of the digitized economy.
· According to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), by 2022, more IP traffic will cross global networks than in all prior “Internet years.” In other words, more traffic will be created in 2022 than in the 32 years since the Internet started. However, increased connectivity brings with it increased security challenges.
· Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the total amount of data stored in the cloud — which includes public clouds operated by vendors and social media companies (think AWS, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), government-owned clouds that are accessible to citizens and businesses, and private clouds owned by mid-to-large-sized corporations — will be 100X greater in 2022 than it is today.
· The number of connected devices on the Internet will exceed 50 billion by 2020, according to Cisco. To put it another way, the number of IoT devices will be three times as high as the global population by 2021. And by 2022, 1 trillion networked sensors will be embedded in the world around us, with up to 45 trillion in 20 years.
· Hundreds of thousands — and possibly millions — of people can be hacked now via their wirelessly connected and digitally monitored implantable medical devices (IMDs) — which include cardioverter defibrillators (ICD), pacemakers, deep brain neurostimulators, insulin pumps, ear tubes, and more.
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
Hospitals are more vulnerable than any other type of organization in 2019. Outdated systems, lack of experienced cyber personnel, highly valuable data, and added incentive to pay ransoms in order to regain patient data are magnetizing cybercriminals to the healthcare market.
Ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations are predicted to quadruple between 2017 and 2020, and will grow to 5X by 2021.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the healthcare industry will spend more than $65 billion cumulatively on cybersecurity products and services from 2017 to 2021.
Personal health information is 50 times more valuable on the black market than financial information, and stolen patient health records can fetch upwards of $60 per record (which is 10–20 times more than credit card information).
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that healthcare will suffer 2–3X more cyberattacks in 2019 than the average amount for other industries. Woefully inadequate security practices, weak and shared passwords, plus vulnerabilities in code, exposes hospitals to perpetrators intent on hacking treasure troves of patient data.
CYBERSECURITY ECONOMY
In 2004, the global cybersecurity market was worth $3.5 billion — and in 2017 it was worth more than $120 billion. The cybersecurity market grew by roughly 35X during that 13-year period — prior to the latest market sizing by Cybersecurity Ventures, for the 5-year period 2017 to 2021.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the global blockchain market will exceed $40 billion by 2025. Results from one survey indicate institutional investors from hedge funds, pension funds, and private equity believe that blockchain technology will have the biggest impact on healthcare, financial services and banking. The study reveals that 39 percent of the investors believe blockchain will do to banking what the Internet did to media.
Total venture capital funding in the cybersecurity space totaled more than $5 billion in 2018, up 20 percent from nearly $4.5 billion in 2017. In 2018, the total amount of funding for Israeli cybersecurity companies grew 22 percent year-over-year to more than $1 billion. According to these figures, Israel, the world’s second-largest exporter of cyber technology (behind the U.S.), accounted for roughly 20 percent of all cybersecurity VC funding.
Based on venture capital dollars invested in cybersecurity, the top 4 countries are (in this order): U.S., Israel, U.K., and Canada.
Virginia is part of the nation’s Cyber Capital, the Washington D.C. region. The state is home to the most cybersecurity companies per capita in the nation.
68 percent of U.S. businesses have not purchased any form of cyber liability or data-breach coverage, showing that businesses are not adopting cyber insurance at a rate that matches the risks they face, according to a Cisco paper. However, a majority of the 25 most populous U.S. cities now have cyber-insurance or are looking into buying it, according to a Wall Street Journal survey.
Singapore announced the launch of the world’s first commercial cyber risk pool, a facility for providing cyber insurance to corporate buyers, as cyberattacks in the Asia Pacific region become more pervasive. The pool will commit up to $1 billion (USD) in risk capacity and will be backed by capital from traditional insurance and insurance-linked securities markets to provide bespoke coverage.
The $100 million Hull McKnight Georgia Cyber Center (GCC) for Innovation and Training in Augusta, Georgia, marks the single-largest investment in a cybersecurity facility by a state government.
The 2019 U.S. President’s budget includes $15 billion for cybersecurity, a $583.4 million (4.1 percent) increase over 2018. The Department of Defense (DoD) was the largest contributor to the budget. The DoD reported $8.5 billion in cybersecurity funding in 2019, a $340 million (4.2 percent) increase over 2018.
Driven by the federal government’s desire to enhance agency cybersecurity posture at every possible level, Deltek forecasts the demand for vendor-furnished information security products and services by the U.S. federal government will increase from $10.9 billion in FY 2018 to over $14.1 billion in FY 2023at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3 percent.
Cybersecurity is the single biggest risk organizations throughout Europe are likely to face over the next year, according to the European Confederation of Institutes of Internal Auditing’s (ECIIA) annual Risk in Focus 2019 report. The data suggests that spending on cybersecurity in the region will see another uptick in 2019.
A 2018 report estimates that energy companies, ranging from drillers to pipeline operators to utilities, invest less than 0.2 percent of their revenue in cybersecurity — while the number of hacker groups targeting the energy sector is soaring. Energy networks are vulnerable to cyberattacks — and hackers can cause massive power outages, placing national defense infrastructures at risk, and endangering millions of citizens.
Estimates placing at least 85 percent of all business assets in digital form, a massive increase of cybercrime, and underinvestment into cyber insurance coverage has led Cybersecurity Ventures to predict that future stock prices of publicly-traded companies — and valuations of most startups and emerging enterprises seeking venture capital — will be influenced by market and investor perceptions of how secure a business’ information systems, data, and employees are.
HELP WANTED
There will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021 — enough to fill 50 NFL stadiums — according to Cybersecurity Ventures. This is up from Cisco’s previous estimation of 1 million cybersecurity openings in 2014. The cybersecurity unemployment rate is at zero percent in 2019, where it’s been since 2011.
U.S. News and World Report stated that the information security profession is growing at a rate of 36.5 percent through 2022. That bodes well for newbies, much the same as more experienced cyber fighters.
The population of cyber engineers and analysts throughout the Washington D.C. Beltway is 3.5 times as big as the rest of the U.S. combined.
With more than 150,000 cyber-related engineering and data science professionals, Maryland has the number one cyber workforce in the world, and leads the U.S. in cyber employment for classified nation-state jobs. Maryland also has the largest concentration of university-trained cyber engineering graduates in the world.
San Antonio is home to the nation’s second-largest concentration of cybersecurity experts.
The U.S. has a total employed cybersecurity workforce consisting of nearly 715,000 people, and there are currently almost 314,000 unfilled positions, according to Cyber Seek, a project supported by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Jobs requesting public cloud security skills remain open 79 days on average — longer than almost any other IT skill, according to Cyber Seek.
The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) estimated that India alone will need 1 million cybersecurity professionals by 2020 to meet the demands of its rapidly growing economy.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that 100 percent of large corporations (Fortune 500, Global 2000) globally will have a CISO or equivalent position by 2021 (up from 70 percent in 2018), although many of them will be unfilled due to a lack of experienced candidates.
The second-highest paying tech job in 2019 is a CISO, with a salary range of $175,000 to $275,000. Fortune 500 corporations in big cities pay as much as $380,000 to $420,000 annually, and more, to their CISOs, much higher than the average range for the position in mid-sized companies, government agencies, and academia.
Flaws in software code, which create vulnerabilities, have created a burgeoning bug bounty economy with big payouts to elite freelancer hackers. Some of them earn more than $500,000 a year. But, that’s a far cry from the average take-home pay for most bug bounty hunters that are self-employed part-timers with no guaranteed income.
For the top coders with leadership and cybersecurity skills — a rare breed — salaries exceed $225,000. In some companies, this position pays more than it does to the CISO. Software plus “soft skills” equals big pay for aspiring programmers with a senior management role in their sights.
New data indicates that of all IT jobs, cybersecurity engineers — with an average annual salary of $140,000 — are projected to be the highest paying and most recruited heading into 2019.
SMALL-TO-MIDSIZE BUSINESSES
Adversaries view small/midmarket businesses as soft targets that have less sophisticated security infrastructure and practices and an inadequate number of trained personnel to manage and respond to threats, according to a Cisco Cybersecurity Special Report.
Nearly half of all cyberattacks are committed against small businesses.
60 percent of small companies that suffer a cyberattack are out of business within six months, according to the U.S. National Cyber Security Alliance.
Cisco’s 2018 SMB Cybersecurity Report found that 53 percent of midmarket companies in 26 countries experienced a breach. For these companies, the top security concerns are targeted phishing attacks against employees, advanced persistent threats, ransomware, denial-of-service attacks and the proliferation of employees allowed to use their own mobile devices.
A Better Business Bureau survey found that for small businesses — which make up more than 97 percent of total businesses in North America — the primary challenges for more than 55 percent of them in order to develop a cybersecurity plan are a lack of resources or knowledge.
Cisco security experts explain that small/midmarket businesses are more inclined to pay ransoms to adversaries so that they can quickly resume normal operations after a ransomware attack. They simply can’t afford the downtime and lack of access to critical data — including customer data.
K-12 & HIGHER EDUCATION
Today, students are learning how to deal with sophisticated cyber threats by becoming hackers themselves — the good kind, according to EdTech Magazine. With the help of experts and educators, many middle and high school students throughout the U.S. are taking ethical hacking courses and setting themselves on the path to becoming cybersecurity experts. Colleges and universities are responding to the labor crunch with diverse programs focused on cybercrime, cybersecurity, and related coursework.
Since January 2016, there have been more than 410 cyber incidents targeting K–12 schools in the United States, according to EdTech Strategies.
According to the Center for Cyber Safety and Education’s Children’s Internet Usage Study, over half (53 percent) use the Internet for purposes other than homework or schoolwork seven days a week. Over a quarter (29 percent) of children admit to having used the Internet in a way that their parents would not approve. And alarmingly, four out of 10 (40 percent) say they have “friended” or connected with someone they didn’t know on a site or app.
Recent data suggests there’s growing interest from students entering college, and IT workers thinking about cybersecurity as an upgrade to their current positions. There are more than 125 colleges and universities in the U.S. alone offering a master’s degree in cybersecurity. Dozens of those programs offer online-only classes and degrees, so even students who can’t attend in person can get a degree.
Maryland has the largest number of university-trained cyber engineering graduates in the world. Maryland is the number one cyber education state in the country, with 17 NSA/DHS Centers of Academic Excellence. Maryland-based universities have awarded 10,000 bachelor’s degrees in cybersecurity-related programs since 2015.
With the introduction of 18 new cybersecurity badges in 2018, nearly two million Girls Scouts of all ages (K-12) will be able to explore opportunities in STEM while developing problem-solving and leadership skills, according to Girls Scouts of the USA (GSUSA).
The Solution: Or a big help to the solution
Get everything off of centralized servers
Transfer data to an innovative blockchain solution with quantum computing power.
Thank you for reading
Steve Schroeder — CEO/Founder Smart Community Technologies
