Chris Pierson, Founder & CEO of BlackCloak, joined Cheddar News to discuss the implications of the joint warning from UK and U.S. intelligence agencies that Chinese spies are stealing intellectual property. Meanwhile, Apple unveiled new security features for the iPhone, including 'Lockdown Mode,' which is intended for high-profile users.

Closing Bell

Cybersecurity Expert Breaks Down FBI, MI5 Warning About Chinese State-Sponsored Hacking

the FBI is joining forces with Britain's M. I. Five to warn the west about what they call one of the greatest challenges to national security and the economies of both countries, chinese state sponsored hacking the heads of the two agencies met in London Wednesday and released a report on the chinese government's involvement in corporate espionage. That same day, Apple introduced new security features for the iphone including lockdown mode for high profile users like politicians and activists. Joining me now is chris, Pearson, founder and ceo of cybersecurity firm black cloak. So chris, thanks for joining us. Let's first talk about this joint presser in London. What was your main takeaway from this? I mean, look, the main takeaway is this is that intellectual property theft by China is something that has always been an issue. But most certainly over the past 10 years has risen in prominence. Uh so research and development is absolutely the most expensive part of every single company's growth and all the rest. And as a result it's rife for the stealing by nation states such as china. They can get huge leaps ahead in terms of years, decades, even off of research and development for new products. And it's something that U. S. Businesses have to take seriously have to pay attention to and we have to move beyond just the crown jewels of personally identifiable information or financial information and really take a hard look at that intellectual property that we have and hold within companies. Now this is a rare warning from both these agencies. What does this tell you about how seriously the US and the UK is taking the situation every once in a while, something really really pops up and and so to speak agitates intelligence services around the world where china is actually focused in on attacking legitimate businesses, business folks uh, and corporations globally. It seems like this pace has picked up over the past few years. And of course with Covid it's only gotten more interesting. The home is actually now the new battleground for most corporate environments. The number of key individuals, key personnel researchers and executives that are at home that might be on home networks is probably adding to the ability for certain nation states that go ahead and penetrate those defense systems more readily than they would if everyone was just at the corporate network plus mixed into that the personal lives of those executives really they're inextricably intertwined to the company itself, the same with the researchers. So a lot more stuff is being developed being worked on in the home, in the home environment. And obviously when you see such a warning like this from both the US and our british allies, it means that it is absolutely on the rise and all chief information security officers, all boards, all corporate c suites should take notice of this. Speaking of being on the rise, how much has cybersecurity breaches increased over the past few years? Well, I mean we just saw this week the release of potentially up to one billion persons information, personal information, crime statistics from actually chinese citizens. So china potentially having this breach and that data trove being offered for sale on the dark web. So this is something globally that has been increasing around the world in terms of P. I. I. That is for sale, personal identifiable information that's for sale, financial information is for sale on the deep web, dark web. And those data breaches at leading companies all on the rise over the past few years, something that seems like you know every single time you tune in there's a new data breach, new credit card list has been stolen, new bank accounts that have been stolen and taken. You know we talked a little bit about this earlier in the show but there's been a rise in remote work or hybrid work. Do you think this has led to the increase in the cybersecurity breaches? So I think that these breaches have always been there right? Companies have always been targeted for their intellectual property and nothing will ever stop that what it actually has done is increase the attack surface. So instead of just trying to attack 10 locations where maybe 100 people are at each location and 1000% company now cybercriminals now nation states can actually target Those 1000 homes, those 1000 remote locations because all companies are now enabled for some aspect of remote work and or the lines between personal life and the corporate life have become extremely blurred once again, increasing that attack surface. And of course, as you would imagine most individuals, executives border directors, folks in their personal lives do not have the same controls, the same protections as they do within the corporate landscape where there's a professional team watching, monitoring and protecting them. Now, I want to talk briefly about another headline, Apple's lockdown mode. So what exactly does this do and do you think it's going to make a difference? So what Apple has done is this has taken an approach where there's gonna be a stepped up level of security on the new IOS releases that come in the fall. And what that really means is that some functionality will be turned off and turned down because those are more common avenues of attack. So specifically facetime calls, you're not gonna be able to get calls in from strangers, it's gonna be someone that you've communicated with people that you call. There's gonna be some limitation on javascript and the ability for websites that are using javascript to work through the safari browser as this is a very exploited path of egress into that device. There gonna be some connections that are blocked, wired connections on the phone will be blocked so that it's not capable of copying the contents of that device onto another computer or another device. And then finally, there will be some message previews where it is actually you can just see the image of the preview, but you can't actually see that Lincoln it's not fully operational. As a result, as Apple's hopes that this will limit the ability for certain high profile high value targets to be attacked as readily as they are. Once again, this is going to be the .0001 of the persons globally that have Apple devices. But in recent times in recent years we've seen a lot more happening with Pegasus anti spyware and a lot more by so to speak. Nation states targeting individuals in their personal lives and on their personal devices. Well, we'll have to leave it there today. That's thanks to Chris Pearson, he's the founder and ceo of cybersecurity firm Black cloak.