The New Normal in IT

CHAPTER 5IT Security for Corporate Resilience

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE¹

The State of IT Security Today

I chose the William Shakespeare quote deliberately for this chapter. We live in a world where rogue actors and state sponsors of cybersecurity and data theft look to profit from organizations with weak security postures. Throughout the pandemic (2020–2021), there have been brash and impactful cybersecurity breaches, most through phishing schemes, leveraging ransomware attacks that encrypt data and ask for hostage ransom fees, typically in Bitcoin. The United States was hit particularly hard with several attacks that disrupted fuel (Colonial Pipeline) and beef production (JBS Foods).² The following represents the top high-profile ransomware attacks in 2021 to date.

• Colonial Pipeline: Darkside (a notorious group based in Eastern Europe, likely Russia) was behind this attack that disrupted fuel distribution from Houston to New Jersey for weeks, resulting in significant gas shortages. Washington D.C. reported during the peak of the disruption that nearly 90 percent of gas stations were out of gas.³
• Brenntag: Darkside impacted the chemical distribution company by stealing 150 gigabytes of data and demanding a $7.5 million ransom in Bitcoin.
• Acer: The group REvil attacked Acer and asked for a $50 million ransom. The group exploited a vulnerability (unpatched) in a Microsoft Exchange server to gain access to Acer's files, including sensitive ...