Resources

Arlington, Va. – June 08, 2021 – GroupSense, a digital risk protection services company, and leading crypotcurrency intelligence company CipherTrace, accounce combining their threat intelligence offerings for enterprise clients who are victims of ransomware attacks.

Hackers are making millions from ransomware attacks. What can be done to stop them? Ed Butler speaks to professional ransomware negotiator Kurtis Minder, about the increasing professionalisation of the ransomware business. Kimberly Grauer, head of research at Chainalysis explains why following the bitcoin trail may be the best way of bringing ransomware gangs to justice and Vishaal Hariprasad, boss of cyber insurance company Resilience, tells us why the ransomware threat means there needs to be a stepchange in how companies view cyber security.

The U.S. government says it's taking ransomware attacks as seriously as terrorism after meat plants and a major U.S. pipeline network were temporarily shuttered by hackers. But will that make it any easier to catch the perpetrators? Joe Uchill, a senior reporter with online cybersecurity publication SC Media, brings us the view from Washington. We also speak with Kurtis Minder, founder and CEO of GroupSense, which helps organizations defend against cyber threats; and David Shipley, co-founder and CEO of Fredericton-based cybersecurity startup Beauceron Security.

Kurtis Minder, #GroupSense CEO, speaks to Bloomberg about ransomware and ransomware negotiations  at 41:52. 

At GroupSense, there’s such a demand for ransomware remediation services they’ve added a hotline that’s featured prominently on the frontpage of their website. No one escapes this form of cyberthreat, Minder told Insider.

Kurtis Minder has some advice about how to negotiate with criminals who extort millions of dollars by crippling companies’ computer systems and stealing their data: Don’t call them “bad guys.”

A few days after Thanksgiving last year, Kurtis Minder got a message from a man whose small construction-engineering firm in upstate New York had been hacked. Minder and his security company, GroupSense, got calls and e-mails like this all the time now, many of them tinged with panic. An employee at a brewery, or a printshop, or a Web-design company would show up for work one morning and find all the computer files locked and a ransom note demanding a cryptocurrency payment to release them.

Ransomware attacks that lock up a victim's systems have become more common. So have people who negotiate with the hackers on behalf of the victims. Kurtis Minder, co-founder of the cyber reconnaissance startup GroupSense, discusses what those negotiations are like, and cybersecurity reporter David Uberti discusses how this approach is viewed within the cyber community. Christopher Zinsli hosts...

Kurtis Minder got into the ransomware negotiation business by accident early last year.

“Industrywide, there is a lack of attention to some of the common things that cause breaches and open companies up to ransomware,” Maley says. “We’re becoming immune to these types of things, as they happen more frequently. We’re seeing the same things across sectors. It’s a lack of attention to the basics.”