# Brian Hay interview on Cyber Security about Phishing

Phishing, deep fake audio and video attacks are becoming much more sophisticated. Cyber criminals posing as a trustworthy entity to trick people into revealing their private, sensitive or confidential information. They use the stolen information to steal identities to empty bank accounts, commit illicit or illegal actions or blackmail people. Ransomware attacks commence by compromising humans with a phishing email.

@BrianHay discusses with @johndimitropoulos the role of AI in exacerbating the risks but also about the significance of building resilience around such threats, validating information and having secondary controls for authentication.

Phishing happens daily and to the best of us. Here’s what to do [https://youtu.be/8PTZMZ0T0sc](https://youtu.be/8PTZMZ0T0sc)

## Dialogue

**John:**
My next question is going to be about phishing attacks. We hear this term phishing. So, in essence, what phishing is all about is about tricking an individual in revealing sensitive information to someone who’s posing as a trustworthy entity... Are the attacks getting more and more sophisticated and, uh, what’s, what’s an example of something really clever that you’ve seen?

**Brian Hay:**
Yeah, I was predicting this for a few years and we’re starting to see it now, deep fake audio and video attacks... So watch out for that space. So from a personal perspective, for example, what we’re seeing in the United States at the moment are parents and grandparents receiving messages from their children saying they’re in a spot of bother. Can you urgently transfer some money into this Bitcoin wallet? Okay. How do we build resilience around that? We need to always think about validation. Okay. We got to question all of our technology. Don’t take it for granted...

**John:**
It really is frightening. Um, I mean, I’ve fallen victim to, uh, to attacks... I think there’s a lot more that can be done.

**Brian Hay:**
Yeah, it is. I think we rely upon others to do things for us sometimes... phishing is our number one threat. Even with ransomware, 90%, it’s been cited recently, 91% of all ransomware attacks commence actually by compromising human with a phishing email. If we look at some of the biggest breaches recently, it all comes back to people being compromised or a poor culture...

The golden rule is very simple. If you’re not sure about your own skill level, follow the golden rule. That golden rule is you’ll never click on a hyperlink or a button in an unsolicited email. If you could be disciplined to follow that simple golden rule, you’ll never fall for a phishing attack. Yeah. Very simple. But we think we’ve sold this puppy that is the internet to the Australian public on the basis of, yeah, get involved, become a digital citizen. It’s great. It’s safe. It’s great. You can have a ball. No one ever wanted to talk about.