The Expert Podcast

Alright, this just goes to show that these cyber attackers are very, very organized. The CDK, which is the big attack that happened back in June to car dealerships, it affected 15,000 plus car dealerships around the country. But the dealerships themselves didn't get hacked; it was one of their vendors that supplied software to all these dealerships that got hacked.

What's the important takeaway from this? Well, even if you don't get hacked, one of your vendors can really wreak havoc on the entire industry. The other takeaway is how organized the hackers are. You can see this was caused by BlackSuit, and look, it's got capital letters. It's a branding, it's a name. And look what it says about them: the BlackSuit ransomware gang is believed to be a rebrand of the Royal ransomware operation. Royal ransomware, and then called BlackSuit, is believed to be the successor of the notorious KTI cybercrime syndicate. These are big-time organizations. They have executive sales departments, IT departments. It's not just some random guy in a basement somewhere; they have large groups of very highly sophisticated technical people. You stand no chance against them, no matter how good your IT person is, how good your cyber defense is; they will find a way to get through it.

That's why it's important to be part of a group, a consortium of businesses, so that if a hacker gets into one, you are notified of the new threat and you can adjust accordingly. Many times this occurs through insurance industry consortiums or cyber liability policies. They may have active monitoring. These hackers are not just, you know, like I said, Joe teenagers sitting in their basement hacking computers; these are very highly sophisticated companies. They're out there to make big money. They're asking for tens of millions of dollars. Sometimes they ask for over a hundred million. It doesn't take many of those to have big paydays.

Even if you have a payroll of 70 or 80 people in your company, as a hacker—which they probably do—they probably have close to a hundred people working for them, and you have to pay all your salaries and divide up the bonuses, just like any company would. Ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty million is going to be a big payday. You do that four or five times a year, and you have a very robust, thriving business.

So, know who you're up against, know who you're having to defend against, and more importantly, have a response system in place—financially, practically, and operationally—because at some point, it's just a matter of time. It's not if, it's when. Every business will be affected. Look, all these car dealerships, they didn't get hacked directly, but many of them are out of business for three, four, five days, not being able to sell cars or work on cars because of this BlackSuit ransomware attack.

Thank you for watching another episode of Actual Human Advisory on Described TV. Remember, we have live one-on-one consultation appointments available at ActualHuman.com, where you can book a one-on-one, undivided attention live call with a licensed investigator, a licensed insurance broker, a licensed mortgage broker, real estate broker. I'm also a certified real estate title examiner, a certified civil court mediator, along with having developed and started over 15 businesses, several of which were sold for millions of dollars. So, if you do have questions in any of those categories, you can arrange a one-on-one live video consultation. Use the link below, and we'll see you on the next video.