This article is Sponsored Content by Resecurity
The Internet has brought plenty of benefits to society, and has immensely changed the way we function day to day. That said, we aren’t always protected from the dangers out there.
Whether you’re familiar with it or not, cryptocurrency is a disruptive technology to come out of the world wide web. Prior to crypto, exchanges required a third party to process transactions between the buyer and seller. This methodology is tried and true, but your financial and personal information might be shared with someone during the process.
Enter cryptocurrency — a platform that no longer requires a middle man to complete a transaction. This is known as a decentralized exchange which has only become possible with technological advancements over the last 20 years.
There’s only one problem: the cryptocurrency landscape isn’t stable or regulated yet. Anytime a disruptive technology enters the scene, it can take time for the surrounding processes to become reliable and trusted by the customers. Think of Netflix or Uber. These services took some time to gain the trust of their users when they first began, but they’re huge now!
With crypto, the main issue surrounds scams and lost money. Since the start of 2021, over 46,000 people reported losing over $1 billion in crypto scams, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That’s about 1 of every 4 dollars reported, completely lost. That’s more loss than any other payment method! Unfortunately, many people are falling victim due to lack of education about how crypto and other related aspects of the Internet work. In addition, scams have become so sophisticated that it’s getting more and more challenging to differentiate between real and fake.
Earlier this month, Kim Kardashian was fined over $1 million to settle SEC charges linked to a crypto promo on her Instagram account. Kardashian isn’t the only one either. Many celebrities accelerate fraudulent campaigns by motivating users to invest in non-existent cryptocurrency offerings and pseudo-investment products.
If that wasn’t bad enough, deep fake technology has the capacity to imitate people’s faces, speech and facial expressions. Deep fakes are a kind of digital forgery produced by generative adversarial networks (GANs). Deep fakes are so effective they’ve even been used to impersonate C-suite executives during phone calls or video chats to action fraudulent wire transfers. Even Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and Elon Musk have been impersonated by deep fakes.
“Deep Fakes with influencers and celebrities in context of cryptocurrencies is a new trend to defraud peaceful users, especially, with new ICOs [initial coin offerings],” said Christian Lees, Chief Technology Officer at Resecurity, California-based cybersecurity company protecting Fortune 500 companies and consumers globally.
Originally, the technology came about in 2014, but was used deviantly in 2019 for the first time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, deep fakes became even more prevalent for committing cybercrime. “The SEC released a statement urging caution around celebrity backed ICOs as well, which confirms regulatory attention to this issue and the need for strict enforcement,” Lees added.
In August, Binance’s chief communications officer Patrick Hillman confirmed scammers used a deep fake AI hologram to deceive users into online meetings and target clients of the company. Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world by assets and volume, but even they’re not safe from fraudulent cyber attacks.
Aside from Kim Kardashian, cryptocurrency losses, and Binance, there have been a ton of other very real cyber threats over the years. OpenSea, the popular platform for buying and selling NFTs, experienced a phishing attack that cost users $1.7 million. More and more cyber scams are occurring on social media platforms too, like Instagram and YouTube. Resecurity warns that the “visible security of law enforcement IT infrastructure” could create a “significant risk to our society.”
Fight Cybercrime with Resecurity
Amidst rising cyber security scams, one thing is certain: companies need to protect themselves from cybercrime now more than ever before. Cyber threats are getting smarter and your operations need to outsmart cybercrime, otherwise you’ll face the consequences. Fortunately, Resecurity is here to save the day.
Resecurity is a cybersecurity organization that provides a unified platform for endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and risk management. Their primary goal is to help large companies, national security, and law enforcement combat cyber threats no matter how complex they are. Resecurity achieves their goal by focusing and investing in intelligence-driven solutions. Through research and development of big data to artificial intelligence to data science, Resecurity’s platform allows you to combat cybercrime. By using Resecurity’s services, your entity can address dark web intelligence, prevent data breaches and network intrusions, protect digital identity for yourself and consumers, and manage cyber threat intelligence.
Resecurity was founded in 2016 and the organization has already come a long way. Over the past 8 years, Rescurity became globally recognized as one of the world’s most innovative cybersecurity companies. More recently, the organization was named as one of the Top 10 fastest growing private cybersecurity companies in Los Angeles, California by Inc. Magazine. Resecurity is also an official member of AFCEA, NDIA, SIA, Infragard, the American Chamber of Commerce in Saudi Arabia (AmChamKSA) and the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico (AmChamMexico).
If you’re interested in protecting your company from cyber threats of any shape or size, reach out to Resecurity to get started today.
