Ian McGinley Talks Cybercrime Trends with Cybersecurity Law Report

Cybersecurity Law Report has published a Q&A with Akin Gump white collar partner Ian McGinley in which he discusses prosecution trends and takeaways from his tenure as Co-Chief of the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

Among the topics discussed:

Advice to companies seeking to avoid a cyberattack – “Often, actors are located abroad and in places where the government can't extradite, and cybercrimes are rising as our lives are increasingly online. Companies should keep this in mind and make sure they have good cyber hygiene on the front end. Good hygiene includes somewhat simple steps of updating software regularly, requiring employee training, and requiring complicated passwords and multi-factor authentication to gain access to accounts. These measures are not only good cyber hygiene, but, increasingly, regulators are demanding this.”

Increase in ransomware – “Ransomware attacks started out with bad actors that essentially created and deployed their own ransomware. Now we are seeing ransomware as a service, which is essentially like software as a service where some, not necessarily sophisticated, actors would have access to ransomware that others created. And they would either buy that ransomware or kick back a portion of the of the profits to the developers of the ransomware. It's become easier for nonsophisticated actors to get into the ransomware business.”

A key takeaway from a major hacking campaign case – “One of the lessons from that case is really that any big organization, whether it's a university, government or private sector company, that has sensitive information, such as intellectual property, trade secrets, etc., should think seriously about having a very strong plan for backing up the information and for protecting it.”

Mr. McGinley joined Akin Gump from the SDNY in September 2021. To learn more about his arrival, please click here.