‘Federal Tech Talk’ Hosts SonicWall CEO Bill Conner to Examine Cybercriminal Strategies that Threaten Federal Agencies

During a recent trip to Washington D.C., SonicWall CEO Bill Conner stopped by Federal News Networks studios to join John Gilroy on Federal Tech Talk.

The pair took to the airwaves (and podcast) to focus on emerging cyber threats that impact enterprises, SMBs and federal agencies alike. Atop the list were attacks over non-standard ports, encrypted threats and malicious PDFs and Office files.

“What’s alarming on this one, these new techniques are evading traditional security sandboxes,” Conner told Gilroy on the show.

In mid-April, SonicWall announced new threat data that highlights the growing volume of PDF fraud campaigns. In all of 2018, the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox discovered more than 47,000 new attack variants in PDF files. In March 2019 alone, the sandbox found more than 73,000 PDF-based attacks.

“It’s incredibly aggressive in terms of the volume. It’s also very evasive,” said Conner on the broadcast. “If you click on that PDF, it might not hit you immediately. It might be delayed before it activates itself. The alarming piece in this city (Washington D.C) — for the Feds — is that it is emanating out of Russia.”

The compelling 40-minute segment, which is available via podcast, also explored the growing volume of IoT attacks, fileless malware and other evolving exploits.

“It’s a cyber arms race,” said Conner. “As many good guys as we have coding to block it and stop it, you’ve got an equal number of bad guys on the other side looking for architecture or feature holes trying to get around [security controls].”

Geoff Blaine

Sr. Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer | SonicWall

A 16-year veteran of the cybersecurity space, Geoff serves as Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer. Geoff is a seasoned B2B marketing professional with core disciplines in digital strategy, content marketing, advertising and corporate communication. He also delivers a blend of real-world journalism experience, cybersecurity perspective and mainstream tech interest.

Geoff graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.