Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss international ransomware threats and how data leaks could impact the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Welcome back. You're watching Yahoo Finance Live. Now 82% jump in ransomware data leaks in 2021. Now there's also a concerning rise in the number of new adversaries vying for your data. And that's according to Crowdstrike's 2022 global threat report. And to give us more context on that report and more, let's welcome in George Kurtz, Crowdstrike's CEO. Thank you for joining us today. So that--

GEORGE KURTZ: Great to be here. Thank you.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: --that 82% a very sobering number there. Why did we see such a jump in ransomware data leaks? And how much of that is to do with us as users versus some of these more sophisticated attackers?

GEORGE KURTZ: Well, let's break that down. When we talk about ransomware, most people understand what that is. Your data is encrypted. You have to pay normally an e-crime actor to get your data back. Over the last year or so, organizations have gotten much better in being able to back up their data. Obviously, companies want to prevent this using technologies like Crowdstrike, but organizations back up the data.

So what the adversaries have done is they've changed their tactics over time, which is a very common trait. And they basically will leak data after they've-- they basically steal the data first, they encrypt it. And then they'll leak the data just to keep the pressure on the victim and take control of the situation. Essentially, they've weaponized the victim's own data. And that's what we've seen.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And this could be really devastating to have your data sort of manipulated like this. Now I want to talk about Russia, which is one of what you call one of the big four that includes Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea. Your report indicates that these new operations and techniques that these countries are using. How are we seeing these strategies used, especially in times of conflict or a stand-off, like we're seeing with the Ukraine and Russia?

GEORGE KURTZ: Well, cyber is here in any physical combat, if you will, any conflict. And what we've seen already are some distributed denial of service attacks. We've seen some what we call psychological operations with SMS messages, talking about ATMs being down. And cyber is an important element, not only on the psychology piece, but obviously on the physical and the kinetic piece. 2015, we saw Russia take down the electric grid in Ukraine. And it will be one element if there is a physical conflict in the Ukraine. And obviously, you can do a lot of damage from a cyber perspective and cause a lot of chaos with the citizens of Ukraine.