01 文章选材
【Para. 1】多家知名企业遭黑客攻击，损失严重
【Para. 2】黑客如今除了窃取信息外，还会威胁勒索赎金
【Para. 3】加密货币和跨国执法的高难度助长了此类犯罪
【Para. 4-6】但近期几起事件仍有所启示：1. 购买专项保险，但并非百分百赔偿损失
【Para. 7-8】2. 警惕外包数据泄露，严格审查承包商资质等
【Para. 9-10】3. 政府也应完善相关法令法规，进一步禁止支付赎金
03原文音频
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Cybercrime is afflicting big business. How to lessen the pain
【Para.1】More than a month for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), an Indian-owned carmaker. A week for Asahi, a Japanese brewing giant. Six weeks for Marks and Spencer (m&s), a British retailer. That is how long each of those firms has needed to recover after being hacked. For JLR, the disruption has extended far beyond the firm. Last month the government in Britain, where it is based, said it would underwrite a £1.5bn ($2bn) loan in an attempt to keep the carmaker’s suppliers afloat.
【Para.2】Cybercrime has long been dominated by thieves who set out to steal information for profit. Now they’re being joined by thugs, who aim to use the threat of damage to a firm’s operations to extort higher payments.
【Para.3】Cryptocurrency has enabled ransomware, an attack in which hackers seize and encrypt vital data, then promise to unscramble it after a ransom is paid. (Sometimes they even keep their word.) As long as criminals focus attacks on firms in the West, countries such as China and Russia, in which many hacking gangs are based, see little need to crack down.
【Para.4】Dig deeper
Companies cannot prevent this, but they are not powerless. As we report, the recent attacks can teach other firms how to lessen the chance they will suffer a similar fate—and to lessen the damage should they do so.
【Para.5】One message is to be aware of which parts of an attack will prove to be the most expensive in the long run. As cyber-attacks have become more common, firms have begun buying specialist insurance to mitigate the risk. That is a good thing: insurance incentivises companies to take security more seriously, since those that don’t take care face higher premiums.
【Para.6】Even so, plenty of companies still do not take out enough cyber insurance, either because of a lack of awareness, or because it is costly. JLR is reckoned to have lost £50m for every week after the attack. m&s is thought to have missed out on around £300m of business in the weeks it spent fixing its website, yet its resilience insurance underwrote just a third of that. Buying insurance that protects against such losses would encourage firms not just to try to stop attackers getting in, but also to ensure their computer systems can recover quickly.
【Para.7】A second idea is to be aware of the risks of outsourcing. Handing off parts of a business to specialist suppliers makes sense. But IT outsourcers hold the keys to many different kingdoms. Front-line employees are usually told to follow a predictable script whenever an IT-support call comes in. These things make outsourcers especially attractive to hackers.
【Para.8】Sure enough, several recent attacks appear to have been carried out after hackers gained a foothold using outsourcing firms. Businesses that elect to outsource should vet their contractors carefully, and decide on risk-sharing arrangements before they sign. Outsourcers themselves may find that beefing up security could differentiate themselves from their rivals.
【Para.9】Governments can help, too, starting with tightening the rules around disclosure. Firms can be reluctant to admit they have been attacked. That reticence makes it harder for the authorities to spot patterns and learn about vulnerabilities, which puts others at risk. America until recently ran forums in which firms could share information confidentially without worrying about falling foul of rules on collusion. They should be revived, and other countries could copy that model.
【Para.10】Governments could go further and ban the payment of ransoms altogether. Some American states already forbid public bodies from making payments. (Britain is planning something similar.) In some places payments may violate rules against shelling out money to organised crime. Elsewhere, police often advise against it. A full ban may sound extreme, but it is in everyone’s interest to have less ransomware. The industry persists because it is more strongly in an individual’s interest to pay off extortionists. If hacking does not pay, it will wither.
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