Q&A: Trusteer chief executive Mickey Boodaei

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This week sees the eCrime Congress hit London. The gathering of security experts and public sector figures from around the world is looking to tackle the increasing issue of cyber criminals and online fraud.

The two days will be spent sharing experiences, proposing new ideas and, of course, showing off the new products vendors have to offer.

IT PRO attended the opening day of the conference this morning and spoke to Mickey Boodaei, chief executive of security firm Trusteer, which specialises in malware detection and prevention software for financial institutions.

We asked him what he thought of the current trends in the security space and whether the battle against the black hats can ever be won.

What do you think will be the main topics and trends people will be discussing over the congress?

I think malware is probably the [main one] as it is definitely one of the biggest trends we are seeing today for online crime.

It is a relatively old topic but it has been getting some momentum over the last year and a half as we have seen more and more attacks that originate from malware and we are seeing malware evolving... and basically getting more and more sophisticated.

As you heard in the keynote with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), this is organised crime, and pretty serious organised crime groups that are now operating some of these attacks, so obviously malware is a big concern.

As an industry we don’t have good solutions to this problem, at least not in the near future.

So are the Government and public sector taking e-crime more seriously now and helping the industry or hindering?

They are definitely taking this more seriously. I think they are realising that we have to work together as an industry [as] it is not just the security vendors or the police or the banks that are being targeted.

We all have to work together, have our systems communicating and our people communicating [as] everyone see a different aspect of the problem. Everyone has different capabilities in terms of shutting down fraud but if we work together and share information we get better chances of hitting the threat.

Do you think this fight is ever going to be won against online criminals or will it just be an ongoing battle?

I think it is the same with online crime as with physical crime. I don’t think we will ever eliminate it but we can certainly manage it.

We need to put it to a level where people feel comfortable, whether it is physical with walking down the street or whether it is online transacting or surfing the web.

Right now it is increasing on the web and what we are trying to do is trying to prevent it from getting worse and getting to a place where we will actually be too scared of banking online or shopping online, all the things that actually improve our life.

So it is a question of managing fraud and reducing the level of exposure. This is something I think as an industry we can achieve, it just depends on our ability to work together and obviously invest enough money and resources into that.

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