A 750% return on investment in a single year sounds incredible, doesn’t it? If you’re chasing “high returns” for your investment portfolio, these numbers would be thrilling. For instance, many Bitcoin portfolios have surged by approximately 1,000% over the past five years, creating immense wealth for their owners. However, this impressive financial gain has also made Bitcoin holders, including businesses, prime targets for cyber adversaries and hackers worldwide. This article will explore why businesses are acquiring more Bitcoin, how this increases their vulnerability, and what solutions are available to address this growing dilemma.
Yet, there’s a much darker side to a 750% increase when we’re talking about costs. The financial toll of cybersecurity breaches has skyrocketed in recent years. According to Chainalysis, the median post-breach ransom demand jumped a staggering 750%, from $198,939 in 2023 to $1.5 million in 2024. If you factor in the projected increased returns for hackers and the associated corporate costs of a breach in 2025, these staggering figures make a seasoned Bitcoin investor blush. So, what exactly is at risk?
The Alarming Reality of Cyber Extortion
Fair Warning: . Yes, Coinbase was breached! Any enterprise that fails to immediately identify unauthorized privilege account escalation by any user will inevitably be scrambling for Bitcoin when it’s time to pay the ransom. After all, the attackers hold the encryption keys to your data. And the situation only worsens. Even Coinbase, the largest crypto trading platform in the USA with over 100 million registered users, has been breached. Businesses and individuals alike will soon require “Super-Cyber-Powers” to protect themselves. Without a Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) solution (such as ANAMO), that forensically tracks HashID modifications, victims will be forced to face severe financial consequences. As the adversary smirks, “I’ll have the Bitcoin, now!”
The Industry Acknowledges Truth: cyber-extortion is booming. With a daily increase in incidents and undeniable year-over-year growth, the “nay-sayers” have been humbled. Those who haven’t yet been compromised are likely on the verge of public shaming on every news channel. New cybercriminal groups are emerging globally, and their gains are becoming increasingly significant. Just last year, US ProTech highlighted “BIG GAME CYBER HUNTING,” exposing this rise in cybercrime and identifying those most at risk.
The unprecedented surge in ransom payouts clearly indicates that cyber extortion groups are now targeting larger corporations with critical infrastructure protection roles. Consequently, these entities are willing to pay even the highest ransoms to comply with federal regulations. This “Big Game Cyber Hunting” drives higher average ransomware payments, which in turn fuels the continued acquisition of Bitcoin by corporations worldwide. Exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities is also a key tactic for cyber predators, and it continues to pose significant challenges for security professionals globally. However, CDM applications solve this problem with autonomous and continuous Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) risk assessments that require zero maintenance, scheduling, or data entry. IT managers, it’s time to wake up: zero-day exploits have been solved with CDM!
The Coinbase Breach: A Sobering Example
Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., confirmed a data breach where non-U.S.-based customer service agents accessed data without a business need. These employees were fired, but not before malicious actors obtained valuable information. The company reported that the breach resulted from cybercriminals bribing overseas support staff, enabling them to access customer data, including names, birthdates, and partial Social Security numbers. The attackers demanded $20 million (undoubtedly in Bitcoin) to prevent the leakage of this information. While no funds or login credentials were known to be compromised, US ProTech learned that Coinbase pledged to reimburse victims, estimating costs of up to $400 million. That’s right, $400 million! It’s clear that Coinbase could have prevented unauthorized privileged account escalation if they had a CDM, such as Anamo CDM, deployed.
Critical Lessons Learned: Strengthening Your Cybersecurity Posture
To protect your organization, consider these key takeaways:
- Stop Unauthorized Privilege Account Escalation: Tracking HashID forensics is a crucial and effective method.
- Eliminate Dwell Time: Identify and eliminate the presence of a technical hacker or adversary within minutes, not hours or days.
- Limit Data Access and Monitor Employees: Restricting data access and continuously monitoring employee activities are essential safeguards against insider threats and malicious employees.
- Correlate CDM Data and HashID Forensics: Implement systems that can alert you in real-time to User, Group, Port, and Permission modifications on every operating system across your entire enterprise.
- Seek Autonomous CDM Systems: Look for 100% autonomous CDM systems with active dashboards that track every computer system down to the smallest changes in transactions, software packages, and even the kernel.
Empowering Your Security: The ANAMO CDM Solution
Right now, you should expect integrated, on-demand reporting, eDiscovery, and automatic alert notifications sent directly to your Security Operations Center (SOC). Your CVE risk assessments should be conducted autonomously, providing correlated data delivered to an active dashboard that offers system-specific patch and update information down to the package and kernel level. Stop investing in outdated technology and eliminate your reliance on common over-the-counter scanners.
Observation: If you’re relying on Windows or other EDR/XDR applications without integrated Comparative HashID Analytics, your faith is misplaced. Seek a CDM solution, not just an EDR.
What did the General Say?
A United States Air Force General’s Endorsement
“That’s Just Phenomenal” This was the exact comment from a USAF General (Ret) after witnessing Anamo’s software vulnerability interrogation functionality, built on the baseline of Comparative HashID Analytics in conjunction with System Info, UUIDs, and other cyber-forensics. Today, software CVE’s can be correlated with SIEM functionality to deliver objective-based system specific IoA’s and IoC’s without API’s, and in near real-time.
General Yates (Ret) expressed his amazement: “So just to confirm, what you’re saying is that you are hashing hardware status, you’re hashing unique account attributes, you’re hashing mission unique software and operational software, you’re hashing the operating system, you’re hashing all of the patches and each of these statuses are registered as independent forensic artifacts, and then Anamo goes out and compares that every two hours or less on all of those different hashes. How are you doing that? Because that’s, that’s just phenomenal.”
Is Commercial-Grade CDM Affordable?
Indeed, CDM is affordable. Like any Software as a Service (SaaS), Anamo’s pricing is based on unique system types, licensing volume, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and service terms. For industry professionals, NFR (Not For Resale) licenses are available and 100% free. So, yes, Anamo CDM is affordable and available today! Imagine correlated cybersecurity risk identification using comparative HashID analytics. This capability remains an extraordinary accomplishment, but with Anamo, it’s a reality. Anamo is the first commercial-grade CDM (Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation) platform specifically designed to capture hackers and technical adversaries, while also integrating and logically delivering various types of threat intelligence.
For example, Anamo replaces traditional CVE assessment scanners with its “Always-on, Always-Scanning” functionality offered 24/7/365 with zero data entry! Anamo integrates this data with its Network Operations Center (NOC) and SOC services, where we take 100% responsibility for of all remediation, patches, and updates. To learn more about proven strategies that include 100% mitigation in a service that updates, patches, and remediates every protected device, simply contact US ProTech or Anamo for our information package.
What to Expect from Anamo CDM:
- ✔ 100% Mitigation Responsibility for Updates, Patches, Remediation (with SOC+NOC)
- ✔ Anomalous Risk Detection of Internal System Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
- ✔ Autonomous Multi-OS Software CVE Interrogation / APIs with NVD, CIRCL, SUSE
- ✔ Autonomous Endpoint Vulnerability Assessment and Tracking of User Behavior Risk
- ✔ Continuous Attack Surface Management Analysis Including OS, Package, & Kernel Level
- ✔ Continuous Tracking of Transaction, User, Group, Port, and Permission / Add or Delete
- ✔ Diagnostics of Windows & Linux Operating Systems, Plus Software Inventory and History
- ✔ Diagnostics, Monitoring, and Alert Notification of all Collected Unique HashID Modifications
- ✔ Documentation and Inventory of System, System Hardware, UUID, and Transactions
- ✔ Real-Time Comparative HashID Analytics with Deep Cybersecurity Forensic Artifact Collection
- ✔ On-Demand eDiscovery and Reporting of related Systems and Cybersecurity Risk Information
See For Yourself… Software Forensics at Your Fingertips!