“People don’t rob banks with guns anymore; they use USB sticks and malware.” Implementing this sobering remark as a reminder of the everchanging landscape of crime, Raj Samani greeted his virtual audience at the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe. Samani, who is Chief Scientist and McAfee Fellow at the cybersecurity firm McAfee, helped found the initiative NoMoreRansom, which now includes more than 100 partners across the public and private sector.

Samani’s talk comes at a ripe moment for increased awareness and precautionary measures regarding cybercrime, which has recently been employed to target the health care industry as it combats the dire prognosis of COVID-19. Samani noted that many cybercrime enforcement officials believed that criminals would take the high road and resist attacking hospitals and health care providers during the pandemic, yet as soon as Samani heard word of a cyberattack at a health care facility a few weeks into this global situation, he received unwanted confirmation that criminals will always take advantage of opportunities when they arise.

When Lewis Woodcock, head of Cyber Security Operations at A.P. Moller — Maersk, spoke to a virtual crowd at the 2020 ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, he remained cautiously optimistic. Despite the gravity and intensity of his experience on the ground during the cyberattack that plagued Maersk in the summer of 2017, Woodcock recalled his time working with the response team saying, “there was no sense of panic, more of a distinct, determined energy. There was work that could almost be described as excitement to tackle the enormous challenge that lay ahead.”

In this case, “enormous challenge” could almost be considered a euphemism. Maersk, an integrated transport logistic company, manages nearly 20% of world trade; its vessels make 50,000 port calls each year. The company itself is large and complex, employing approximately 88,000 people globally and with no real central office. When their networks were struck with a cyberattack that shut down all their computer operating systems, the outage it caused transcended national borders and affected hundreds of thousands of people.