Summary List Placement
An heiress kept getting outfoxed in a legal battle. No matter what detailed strategy she and her lawyers took, the other side seemed to somehow anticipate it perfectly. Millions of dollars were at stake.
No amount of preparation could outpace her adversaries. The heiress worked with her attorneys, corresponding on her laptops, the iPads she kept beside her several pools, even the old desktop in one of her homes.
Wait a minute — maybe they’re reading our emails, the heiress thought.
She brought in Aristo Cyber Defense, one of a new breed of boutique concierge cybersecurity companies that specialize in protecting the personal lives of the rich and famous from hackers.
Voilà.
The old desktop computer had a sophisticated piece of malware barnacled to it that was sending data from her network to an external computer system, Aristo discovered and explained to Business Insider.
Welcome to the new cybersecurity arms race between criminals and the ultra-rich being fought one mansion at a time.
Cybercriminals are targeting the homes of CEOs, movie stars, billionaires, and professional athletes, whose lavish residences are often filled with unsecured laptops, tablets, smart phones, and Internet of Things devices. Especially as they’re hunkered down in their vulnerable mansions during the pandemic, the mega-rich are fighting back with concierge cybersecurity firms that are setting them up with defenses formerly reserved for regulated companies and small nations, several firms told Business Insider.
“The home is the new battleground, and for corporate executives and high-wealth individuals, that means intrusions into their personal lives and their family life,” says BlackCloak CEO Chris Pierson, whose startup focuses exclusively on concierge cybersecurity for powerful people’s private lives.
In new research BlackCloak has found that 39% of the rich and powerful are “already compromised,” with either malware on their home devices, or cameras in their homes unsecured by any password at all.
Mike Janke, a veteran cybersecurity investor whose DataTribe VC firm invests in BlackCloak, says the firm is addressing an increasingly important issue: “Why try to attack the crown-jewels of Exxon when you can get in the CEO’s device in his home and on his home network?”
Other data also backs up this trend. Verizon’s hallowed Data Breach Investigations Report – the most respected annual threat report because of the telecom’s vast access to data – found that cybercrime on executives was one of the top trends in security last year, with social engineering scams 12 times more likely to hit executives than other workers. There’s also been an increasing in “whaling,” a more tailored form of phishing attack wherein hackers specifically target high-ranking executives with emails that appear to be from a close contact. “Typically time-starved and under pressure to deliver, senior executives quickly review and click on emails prior to moving on to the next (or have assistants managing email on their behalf), making suspicious emails more likely to get through,” Verizon found.
This week a top cybersecurity firm, managed services firm, and insurer banded together to provide wealthy individuals something not even most businesses thought they needed …read more
Source:: Business Insider