U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to meet with the CEOs of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and others on Wednesday (Aug. 25) to discuss cybersecurity concerns during a time when ransomware and other breaches are at an all-time high, Bloomberg and other media reported on Tuesday (Aug. 24).
The White House meeting is expected to review the efforts private companies have made to weed out hackers and patch vulnerabilities before fraudsters can launch an attack and swipe personal data and corporate files, sources told Bloomberg.
See also: T-Mobile Says It’s Working To Address Cybersecurity Incident
CEOs anticipated to be in attendance include Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon’s Andy Jassy. It is also expected that the CEOs from banks, energy companies and water utilities will be part of the White House conference with Biden.
Ransomware attacks are on the rise, with a 93 percent escalation during the first six months of this year over the same period in 2020, according to Check Point’s mid-year security report. The attacks are often carried out using a methodology called Triple Extortion.
“In addition to stealing sensitive data from organizations and threatening to release it publicly unless a payment is made, attackers are now targeting organizations’ customers and/or business partners and demanding ransoms from them, too,” Check Point said in a blog post about its latest security report.
According to PYMNTS data, two-thirds of consumers will drop a merchant after just one cybersecurity issue. People surveyed have said they are worried about the security issues connected to providing their personally identifiable information (PII) in order to use the digital platforms that are now important to their daily lives.
Read more: Two-Thirds Of Digital Shoppers Will Bolt If They Feel Unsafe Online
“When I was a kid, criminals robbed banks and had guns. Now they’re not even in the same country. They sit in Eastern Europe on a computer and they make large sums of money,” said Richard Clarke, former national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, during a recent talk with Karen Webster, CEO of PYMNTS.
Related news: Cybersecurity Czar Richard Clarke Tells PYMNTS ‘New Mindset’ Needed To Win Cyberwar
The standard safeguards of one-time passwords and SMS are not effective in today’s world of digital-first lifestyles. Nok Nok Labs CEO Phillip Dunkelberger told PYMNTS that cybercrime is expensive, and that governments have to get tough on cyber thieves.
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