'Hackers Love a Good Crisis': Dechert's Brenda Sharton on the Rise in Cybersecurity Threats and Ransom Demands
Sharton said the remote work environment has forced companies to up their game. One client in the information security space reported a 35-fold increase in phishing emails during the pandemic.
May 26, 2021 at 07:30 AM
7 minute read
Talk to Dechert litigation partner Brenda Sharton, co-chair of the firm's global privacy & cybersecurity practice, long enough and things are bound to get exponential. She and her team typically worked on two-to-three data breaches per week prior to having nine land on her desk from one Thursday to the next Tuesday during the early onset of the pandemic in Europe.
"When I picked my head up on Tuesday, I went 'Oh my God, it's COVID.'" said Sharton when we spoke by phone yesterday. "It dawned on me that this was what was going on. The hackers love a good crisis, and they like to take advantage of any disruption."
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