"Ransomware is apparently more profitable than cocaine trafficking in the '90s, according to Coveware's recent report," said Beazley's Mark Singer. "It's also become just so easy to carry out. Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) has made it accessible to a much wider audience."

"I guess everyone's entitled to one good scare," said Sheriff Leigh Brackett in the original Halloween. However, even in the run-up to the traditional night of horror movies and candy, cyberthreats are arguably more frightening than the return of Michael Myers.

Lately, the news is sobering and scary indeed: A new survey from The Identity Theft Resource Center revealed that almost 60% of small business owners have had data compromised, a security breach or both. Furthermore, three-quarters of those owners reported having more than one event and a third of them had at least three. Following one of these events, more than 40% of businesses needed one or two years to return to normal, while over 25% said it took three to five years to recover.

Aimed at allaying fears and arming agents for the fight, PropertyCasualty360 hosted a Halloween-themed Twitter chat, "All Treats, No Tricks: Sweet Advice for Mitigating Cyber Threats," on Tuesday, October 26. The chat featured experts from across the industry and covered subjects from ransomware and "cyber gangs" to the role of independent agents in stemming these threats.

"Modern ransomware is now the most reliable way to transform network access into money," said Chris Hendricks, head of incident response at Coalition. "Threats of systemic downtime and leaked data are a powerful motivator, and the extortionists know it."

"Ransomware is apparently more profitable than cocaine trafficking in the '90s, according to Coveware's recent report," said Beazley's Mark Singer. "It's also become just so easy to carry out. Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) has made it accessible to a much wider audience."

And RaaS attacks are only increasing, the panel agreed.

"With a low barrier to entry due to RaaS, many new threat actors have entered the fold," remarked Jason Rebholz of Corvus Insurance. "Additional specialization and outsourcing has created an ecosystem for ransomware attacks to thrive."

Bill Haber of TEKRiSQ corroborated this, elaborating:  "RaaS is bringing more unsophisticated criminals to the game targeting supply chain and companies with low tolerance for downtime."

At-Bay's Rotem Iram also agreed, with the wrinkle that "it is still the big groups that do the most damage. And those groups should be targeted by our government, just like Revil last week — a great example, sadly an exception."

The chat wasn't all dire predictions, as the panel also offered some practical advice.

"Treat all new and change of payment requests as suspect. Before making a payment on a new payment request or a change in payment, use a second form of authentication. That second form should be a phone call to the last known phone number for the requestor," said Catherine Lyle, head of claims at Coalition.

"Multi-factor authentication (MFA) everywhere is a huge step, along with well-tested backups and multi-step verification for financial transactions," said Hendricks. "Commit to never changing payment details with just an email. The classics work well."

"The basics are so often glossed over for the fancier tech. If you can build a foundation built on the basics, you can go so much further to securing your organization," agreed Rebholz.

"I generally feel that the best network setup is such where logging in from home and work is exactly the same," said Iram. "This way, no new behaviors are needed. Not every organization can do that, so using VPN and MFA are key."

"Enable the individuals to understand how and why to do this, and do so quickly and affordably … this can be a reality. That's our belief," seconded Haber.

And as far as "the classics" were concerned, Singer (presumably) jokingly suggested, "Don't use 'Password123' as your password."

See highlights from the conversation below. You can also get a full recap here and continue the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #NightmareOnCyberStreet.

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