Director of Operations states what keeps him awake at night.
Ransomware is the cause of most sleepless nights, according to the NCSC’s operations director.
Speaking at the SANS Cyber Threat conference in London, Paul Chichester, director of operations at the NCSC, said “a lot of time can be spent talking about nation states” but day in and day out, from an NCSC and a national point of view, it is “cyber criminality, it is ransomware, and it is extortion that is causing the most harm minute by minute.”
Chichester also said that the adaptive tradecraft of threat groups in the ransomware ecosystem “is certainly something that's going to keep me sort of awake in terms of ‘I know the bad things are happening’ and ‘I know that whilst we're sleeping companies and businesses for being targeted’ and they might go out of business.”
He said there is a visceral feeling in the role the NCSC performs, especially as it assists victims. Chichester said he sees the physical and mental impact that has on individuals and their resilience “is really profound.”
He also claimed that seeing the impact of ransomware everyday drives the need to respond and take action.
Written by
Dan Raywood
Senior Editor
SC Media UK
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 16 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Conference, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and ESET Security Days.
Outside work, Dan enjoys supporting Tottenham Hotspur, managing mischievous cats, and sampling craft beers.
