Is Monitoring the Dark Web the best way to Slow down Cybercrime?

Cybercrime starts and ends with stolen information.

According to ITProPortal, the cybercrime economy could be bigger than Apple, Google and Facebook combined. The industry has matured into an organized market that dark web links is probably more profitable than the drug trade.

Criminals use innovative and state-of-the-art tools to steal information from large and small organizations and then either use it themselves or, most common, sell it to other criminals through the Dark Web.

Small and mid-sized businesses have become the mark of cybercrime and data breaches because they don't have the interest, time or money to set up safeguarding to protect against an attack. Many have thousands of accounts that hold Personal Identifying Information, PII, or intelligent property that may include patents, research and unpublished electronic assets. Other small businesses work directly with larger organizations and can serve as a web site of entry much like the HVAC company was in the mark data breach.

Some of the brightest minds have developed creative ways to prevent valuable and private information from being stolen. These information security programs are, for the most part, defensive in nature. They basically put up a wall of protection to keep malware out and the information inside safe and secure.

Sophisticated cyber criminals discover and use the organization's weakest links to set up an attack

Unfortunately, even the best defensive programs have holes in their protection. Here are the challenges every organization faces according to a Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report in 2013:

76 percent of network intrusions explore weak or stolen credentials

73 percent of online banking users reuse their account details for non-financial websites

80 percent of breaches that involved cyber criminals used stolen credentials

Symantec in 2014 estimated that 45 percent of all attacks is detected by traditional anti-virus and thus 52 percent of attacks go buried. The result is anti-virus software and defensive protection programs can't keep up. The bad guys could already be inside the organization's walls.

Small and mid-sized businesses can suffer greatly from a data breach. Sixty percent go out of business within a year of a data breach according to the National Cyber Security Alliance 2013.

What can a company do to protect itself from a data breach?

For many years I have advocated the rendering of "Best Practices" to protect personal identifying information within the business. There are basic practices every business should implement to meet the requirements of federal, state and industry rules and regulations. I'm sad to say very few small and mid-sized businesses meet these standards.

The second step is something new that most businesses and their professionals haven't heard of or implemented into their protection programs. It involves monitoring the Dark Web.

The Dark Web holds the secret to slowing down cybercrime

Cybercriminals publicly trade stolen information on the Dark Web. It holds a wealth of information that could negatively impact a businesses' current and prospective clients. This is where criminals go to buy-sell-trade stolen data. It is easy for fraudsters to access stolen information they need to infiltrate business and conduct nefarious affairs. A single data breach could put a company out of business.

Fortunately, there are organizations that constantly monitor the Dark Web for stolen information 24-7, 365 days a year. Criminals publicly share this information through chat rooms, blogs, websites, bulletin boards, Peer-to-Peer networks and other black market sites. They identify data as it accesses criminal command-and-control servers from multiple geographies that national IP addresses cannot access. The amount of destroyed information gathered is incredible. For example:

Millions of destroyed credentials and CAN card numbers are collected every month

Approximately one million destroyed IP addresses are collected every day

This information can stay on the Dark Web for weeks, months or, sometimes, years before it is used. A company that monitors for stolen information can see almost immediately when their stolen information shows up. The next phase is to take practical action to clean up the stolen information and prevent, what could become, a data breach or business identity theft. The information, essentially, becomes useless for the cybercriminal.

What would happen to cybercrime when most small and mid-sized businesses take this Dark Web monitoring seriously?

The effect on the criminal side of the Dark Web could be crippling when the majority of businesses implement the offer and take advantage of the information. The goal is to render stolen information useless as quickly as possible.

There won't be much relation to cybercrime until the majority of small and mid-sized businesses implement this kind of offensive action. Cybercriminals are counting on very few businesses take practical action, but if by some miracle businesses wake up and take action we could see a major relation to cybercrime.

Cleaning up stolen credentials and IP addresses isn't complicated or difficult once you know that the information has been stolen. It's the businesses that don't know their information has been destroyed that will take the biggest hit.

Is this the best way to slow down cybercrime? What do you this is the best way to drive back a data breach or business identity theft - Option one: Wait for it to happen and react, or Option two: Take offensive, practical steps to find destroyed information on the Dark Web and clean it up?