Though ransomware attacks dropped significantly in early 2018, over the past several years they have reemerged with a vengeance. Ransom payments have also shot up, and in December 2019 the average ransom payout to an attacker was over $80,000. Through this gain in popularity and increasing ransom payout, attackers are developing new features and capabilities to make ransomware more sophisticated.
Allie Mellen has spent the past decade in engineering, development, and technical consulting roles at multiple venture-backed startups, as well as research roles at MIT and Boston University. She received her B.S. degree in Computer Engineering, and has been recognized worldwide for her security research at conferences like Black Hat USA, DEFCON, HOPE, and others. She is now a security strategist in the Office of the CSO at Cybereason, where she is a frequent speaker at security conferences globally teaching about security and pushing the boundaries of the industry.
ALLIE MELLEN, SECURITY STRATEGIST, CYBEREASON