May 15 2019

Cryptojacking: What Is It and Why Should Your Business Be Concerned?

The digital revolution of finance and payments is exciting. While there are some who will always love cold, hard cash, there are plenty of people who are excited about upending the currency model and doing something that is completely digital. This excitement has led to the rise of digital-native cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin. While innovation is certainly a key part of this transformation, there's some risky activity, namely cryptomining, associated with this emerging technology. We spoke with two Cisco experts while we were at RSA Conference 2019 to better understand what cryptojacking is, why the behavior poses a risk to organizations and what tools can help detect and mitigate this threat. 


    • Ayse Kaya Firat, Head of Analytics and Customer Insights, Cisco
    • Brian Roddy, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Security, Cisco

Video Highlights

  • Cryptocurrencies rely on donated computing power to fuel their ledgers, but hackers can hijack unmonitored computing devices to mine currency without an organization's knowledge or consent.
  • Even though this cryptomining can run passively and at low volumes, the fact that these hackers have access to your systems means that they could do more malicious things in the future.
  • Cisco Umbrella is a DNS-oriented product that can help IT gain insight into what's happening and block activities like cryptojacking.