In March 2016, John Podesta, the former chairman of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was fooled into entering his password for his private Gmail account.
Last week, ransomware cyberattacks again ravaged the globe, locking down files of major corporations and demanding they pay a ransom to unlock them. According to the CEO of an anti-fraud financial technology (fintech) company, this is because cybersecurity places the onus on consumers to protect themselves – and that’s a problem.
Rodger Desai, the chief executive officer of New York startup Payfone, said that recent cyberattacks rely on individual consumers to operate. “Security today involves the consumer to secure themselves, and that’s the problem,” he told CNBC in a phone interview on Friday. “Whenever consumers are involved – and they’re always involved – people can socially engineer the consumer.”
Desai heads the fintech firm Payfone, which uses automated customer identity authentication technology, to remove the need for using passcodes or security questions.
