LATAM Gets Double-Fucked by Cybercriminals: And I’m Supposed to Feel Surprised?

Oh, look. Latin America is getting absolutely reamed by cyberattacks—twice as hard as the US, with a gut-wrenching 1,600+ attacks per organization per week. That’s 2,400 different ways some script kiddie in their mother’s basement is trying to fist your database while your C-suite is busy wondering why the coffee machine isn’t working.

According to this digital disaster report, the financial sector is taking it particularly hard up the arse—37% of all attacks, because nothing says “profitable target” like a bank that still thinks “password123” is acceptable security policy. Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico are leading this shitshow, probably because their infrastructure is held together with expired SSL certificates and prayers to whatever deity still listens to IT departments.

You want to know why they’re getting hammered? Because management is too fucking cheap to buy proper security. They’ve got legacy systems running Windows XP in critical infrastructure, users who click on phishing links faster than I can drink a pint, and a security budget that wouldn’t cover the cost of a half-decent sandwich. Ransomware gangs aren’t stupid—they go where the doors are unlocked and the money is still good.

While US companies are busy drowning in compliance paperwork and zero-trust architecture buzzwords, LATAM organizations are practically begging to be crypto-locked into oblivion. It’s a fucking feeding frenzy, and the sharks are wearing hoodies instead of suits.

Read the full horror story here: https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/latam-2x-more-cyberattacks-us

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Anecdote corner: Reminds me of the time some MBA-wielding genius suggested we “migrate our security to the cloud” by forwarding all our admin passwords to his Gmail account “for safekeeping.” When I explained that this was the digital equivalent of writing your PIN on your forehead and walking into a prison yard, he told me I was “resistant to innovation.” Last I heard, his credentials were selling on the dark web for the price of a stale doughnut. Some people have to learn the hard way that “cost-cutting” and “security” go together like petrol and matches.

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