BlackBerry Cylance VP Tom Pace talks ransomware with 60 Minutes

Ransomware attacks are on the rise and last night, 60 Minutes took a deeper look into it all highlighting several companies and organizations that have been affected by the hacks. As part of the discussion surrounding how ransomware works and what preventative steps can be taken, 60 Minutes spoke with BlackBerry Cylance VP Tom Pace.

Although the above video is just a portion of the full discussion, which you can view in full here, Pace walked CBS' Scott Pelley through just how easy it is to purchase ransomware via the dark web and what it can do to a network and files by having it lockdown and encrypt his own files.

Late last year, BlackBerry introduced their own ransomware recovery feature that allows organizations to quickly limit and contain ransomware attacks through account freezing, rollback features and more!

Beyond data loss, opportunity costs, and reputational risks, downtime resulting from ransomware attacks can inflict real harm on customers in any industry, including healthcare or public safety, where the consequences of any delay can be catastrophic," said Billy Ho, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Products, BlackBerry. "Organizations need to have a strong culture of security to minimize the risk of an attack – something that our Cybersecurity Consulting team has been supporting for the last several years. And in a worst-case scenario, it's critical that organizations also have a layered defense model in place and an enterprise technology stack that is designed with the inevitable breach in mind."

As the report highlights, critical public networks are increasingly being attacked daily costing billions of dollars annually and seeing BlackBerry front and center in the conversation was great to see. If you haven't checked it out yet, be sure to give it a look! You can also check out the BlackBerry Cylance InSecurity Podcast featuring Tom.