{"id":97281,"date":"2017-04-12T07:20:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T12:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=97281"},"modified":"2017-04-19T08:41:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T13:41:01","slug":"expert-insights-2-cyber-threats-security-caribbean-2017-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2017\/04\/expert-insights-2-cyber-threats-security-caribbean-2017-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert insights 2: Cyber threats and security in the Caribbean 2017 update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our 2017 Expert Insight series on network intrusion and security in the Caribbean\u00a0continues with Hector Dias, a network\/IT security professional based in the Dominican Republic.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In this the second in our Expert insights series for 2017 on cyber threats and security in the Caribbean, we are thrilled, once again, to have Hector Diaz of Cylance, a cybersecurity products and services company, who is based in the Dominican Republic. Previously, Hector was Regional Account Manager, Caribbean, at Intel Security (formerly known as McAfee). He has extensive experience in the IT security space, and possesses a diverse skills set, which includes a strong technical background in infrastructure and security.<\/p>\n

ICT Pulse: \u00a0Hector, give us a quick recap of what have been the most prevalent types of incidents in the Dominican Republic and\/or in the Caribbean region over the past year or so? How has the threat landscape changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hector Diaz:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Hi Michele, thanks for having me as part of the series once again in 2017. The threat landscape in Caribbean region has evolved to incorporate new techniques and to cover a wider spectrum of targets. Every year more and more companies and consumers are depending on technology for pretty much each process from CRM systems to an individual purchasing some goods on the web. Per the 2016 Verizon Data Breach Report, and I quote \u201cin a [whopping] 93% of the cases they analyzed, systems were compromised in minutes or less and data exfiltration happened within minutes in 28% of cases. But even where exfiltration took days, the criminals didn\u2019t need to worry. In 83% of cases, victims didn\u2019t find out they\u2019d been breached for weeks or more<\/em>\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we add to this the growing and visible threat of ransomware, I think we still have a lot of room for improvement in the region in the adoption of proper policies and user education which should be complemented also with technologies that can coexist with the user and provide protection without interfering with business processes or the actual user computing experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of providing real\/objective data about incidents in the region, it is almost impossible to get our hands in some reliable data other than telemetry that vendors can collect to identify the origin of a threat or the number of detections that occur in a region, other than that, the region still lacks of regulations that obligate them to disclose IT security incidents.<\/span><\/p>\n

ICTP: \u00a0Over the past year, ransomware incidents appeared to have been quite plentiful across the region. Are they still as huge a threat? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"HD: \u00a0<\/strong>Ransomware continues to be the most prevalent and visible threat and it has evolved from our last conversation on this topic, criminal campaigns today are more advanced compared to what we have seen in the past, with the added problem that samples and toolkits can be easily obtained and used successfully by criminals that have little to no hacking skills, often referred to as Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) and there are plenty of examples of this \u201cbusiness model\u201d where cybercriminals even provide Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Technical support to their \u201ccustomers\u201d massifying this problem to exponential levels, <\/span>these ransomware-as-a-service (Raas) offerings are being released more and more frequently.\u00a0Only three years ago, we would see maybe three or four legitimate RaaS offerings appear every year. Now, we see far more, often several per month.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the features that some of these ransomware as a service \u201csubscriptions\u201d include:<\/p>\n