Around the world, there are currently 121 global cyberattacks happening every second. The threat is real, and it’s costing businesses billions of dollars every year.

Frank Abagnale — once called “the world’s greatest con man ”, now turned top FBI guru — has set his sights on these cyber attackers.

After being immortalised in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale now works as a fraud expert for the FBI and is an American Association of Retired Person Fraud Watch Network ambassador.

“My life’s work is now about helping businesses protect against fraudsters,” he says. “Anyone who lives in the US or UK can count on the fact that they’ve already been hacked. Any business connected to the internet is likely being probed this very minute by hackers.”

Abagnale says that the thing many people aren’t aware of is that the FBI fight to stay ahead of hackers every day. And this fight to stay one step ahead is getting tougher and tougher.

As we saw this summer, computers from the Ukraine to the US were crippled by a ransomware cyber attack.

Major US cities experienced power outages that, Abagnale explains, “immediately drove a false scare of cyber-tampering to power and then emergency sirens in Dallas were hacked. 156 sirens were set off for 40 minutes.

"Our reliance on technology and a false sense of security are the two things being exploited.”

Abagnale predicts a post-password era

Some say password technology is archaic and insufficient in protecting users.

Aside from burdening the public with the task of providing millions of answers to knowledge-based questions, passwords are hugely outdated. Passwords have been widely used since the 1970s, and unfortunately, cybercrime continued to evolve while the security measures stayed stuck in the past.

Abagnale believes that the public and “far too many businesses” are entrusting massive amounts of sensitive data with passwords. They are “grossly underestimating the likelihood that their details have already been stolen by digital fraudsters.”

“As someone who knows the power of impersonation, trust me, there are better ways to affirm people really are who they claim to be.”

The anti-password revolution, which Abagnale labels “the biggest movement in the internet era” makes sense. By ridding the world of passwords, there will be no incentive to steal passwords. Malware that steals passwords will lose its power and the value of passwords that are bought and sold among criminals will diminish.

“As someone who knows the power of impersonation, trust me, there are better ways to affirm people really are who they claim to be,” he explains.

Another global cyberattack is imminent

Cyberattacks are getting more sophisticated and are coming at an increased rate.

The root causes aren’t always passwords, but, according to Abagnale, “the threat will remain when static passwords are easily being used by cyber crooks”.

“The possibility of a larger, more devastating cyberattack is definitely looming. Most people just don’t know how easy it is for fraudsters to bypass passwords and knowledge-based, answer-protected data.”

“The possibility of a larger, more devastating cyberattack is definitely looming.”

According to Abagnale, updating software as soon as patches become available, using advanced authentication, like two-factor authentication, and regularly backing up systems are now “critical”, especially for businesses.

The return of cheque forgery

With today’s technology, cheque forgery, alteration and counterfeiting have, worryingly, become extremely simple.

“Fifty years ago when I forged cheques, it required an expensive four-colour printing press, colour separations, negatives, typesetting, and skill.

"Because of colour copiers, scanners, computer software programs and even household chemicals, it is now a much simpler crime.”

“Because of colour copiers, scanners, computer software programs and even household chemicals, it is now a much simpler crime.”

Yet who are the people forging cheques these days?

“Today,” Abagnale explains, “a lot of cheque forgeries are actually committed by street gangs. They have found it a lot easier and more profitable to forge checks than to push drugs.

"Sentencing for forging checks is also much lighter than drug trafficking, so they believe it’s a smarter move.”

Trump: a change for the FBI?

With the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey back in May, we wanted to know if things within the FBI have changed since Trump became President.

With forty years of experience working with the FBI, Abagnale has valuable insight into the agency's inner workings.

“It does not matter who the director or president is, the Federal Bureau of Investigation works without political considerations.”

Abagnale, who has worked with the FBI for forty years strongly believes that despite Comey’s firing, it does not matter who the president is or what he does. The FBI, in his mind, has nothing to do with politics and never will. Directors will always come and go.

“It does not matter who the director or president is, the Federal Bureau of Investigation works without political considerations.”

According to Abagnale, the FBI’s goal is always to help the people of the United States and there are no hidden agendas.

Image courtesy of Dreamworks

PR nightmares: Ten of the worst corporate data breaches

LinkedIn, 2012

Hackers sold name and password info for more than 117 million accounts

Target, 2013

The personal and financial information of 110 million customers was exposed

JP Morgan, 2014

One JP Morgan Chase’s servers was compromised, resulting in fraud schemes yielding up to $100m

Home Depot, 2014

Hackers stole email and credit card data from more than 50 million customers

Sony, 2014

Emails and sensitive documents were leaked, thought to be by North Korea im retaliation for Sony’s production of a film mocking the country’s leader Kim Jong Un

Hilton Hotels, 2015

Dozens of Hilton and Starwood hotels had their payment systems compromised and hackers managed to steal customer credit card data

TalkTalk, 2015

The personal data of 156,959 customers, including names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers, were stolen

Tesco, 2016

Hackers made off with around $3.2m from more than 9,000 Tesco Bank accounts

Swift, 2016

Weaknesses in the Swift payment system resulted in $81m being stolen from the Bangladesh Central Bank’s account at the New York Federal Reserve

Chipotle, 2017

Phishing was used to steal the credit card information of millions of Chipotle customers, thought to be part of a wider restaurant customer scam orchestrated by an Eastern European criminal gang