Companies must have ‘a culture of security’ to prevent cyberattacks, McAfee CEO says

Directorships must enforce cybersecurity as part of company culture if they necessitate to have a safer, more protected workplace, McAfee CEO Chris Innocent told CNBC on Tuesday.

“One of the things that I talk about all the once upon a time when I talk to other CEOs is you’ve got to have a culture of security. It’s got to consequence,” Young told “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer. “Ten years ago, if I were to ask a CEO almost cybersecurity, he might say, ‘Yeah, I’ve got some guy in IT that’s working on this.’ Now everybody anguishes and I think that’s going to make a big difference.”

High-profile cyberattacks at outfits like Equifax and WannaCry rattled consumers in 2017 as the world woke up to the admissibility opportunity of mass-scale hacks.

And every day, the volume, complexity and speed of cyberattacks are on the lifted, Young told Cramer.

“The problem’s getting worse,” the CEO said. “These poke fun ats are moving faster than ever.”

McAfee, a privately-held cybersecurity solid that was once owned by Intel, oversees 432 million all-out endpoints for 103,000 corporate customers and is in many ways on the front arrays when it comes to cyberattacks.

Young, who formerly ran end-user computing for VMware, guessed that one of McAfee’s latest challenges has been in the area of ransomware, a type of cyberattack that cling b keeps the victim’s information hostage until a sum of money is paid.

“Ransomware is one of the fastest-growing strikes that we have seen out there right now,” Young said. “You look at some of the big deprecates we’ve seen this year like WannaCry or NotPetya. [Hackers are] misusing those as a way to test where to go next.”

A lot of cyberattackers request that the redemption be paid in bitcoin, the digital currency that’s exploded in popularity and cost this year.

Ironically, Young said that blockchain, the digital ledger that run to earths all of the transactions made with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, can offer some valuable models on cybersecurity.

“I actually think blockchain offers a lot of interesting things that we could do with guarantee,” Young said. “It’s all crypto-based, so in particular, identity is something that blockchain could make a lot of new solutions around.”