CISO Pasi Koistinen on Cryptomarkets, Cybercrime and His Role in Coinhako
18 Aprile 2022 - 2:20PM
NEWSBTC
The NewsBTC team interacted with Pasi Koistinen for the first time
after he was appointed the CISO of Coinhako. We asked him a few
questions about the new role and his views on crypto markets and
cybercrime. Here is an excerpt of the interesting interaction that
happened recently. Q: Thanks for joining us, and congratulations on
your new role as the CISO of Coinhako. First, would you please
introduce Coinhako to our readers? A: Coinhako was founded in 2014
in Singapore, and the platform’s mission is to be the go-to gateway
to the crypto economy, providing easy access to digital assets and
connecting users to the crypto space. Q: Can you tell us about your
role in Coinhako and what made you join this company in particular?
A: My role as Coinhako’s CISO is to organize and manage
cybersecurity activities across the whole company, and communicate
related risks to stakeholders. I also act as the head of the
security function and work in close contact with other business
units spanning across legal, compliance, programming, and user ops.
The move to the crypto space was a natural one as I always had a
personal interest in the fast-growing digital assets industry.
Coinhako was a good choice because it is one of the
longest-standing digital asset companies in Singapore. Also, I felt
that Coinhako having the in-principle approval as a DPT service
provider in Singapore was a good indicator of their reliability. Q:
Would you like to give us some insight into how Coinhako protects
the privacy and security of its users? A: Besides having a robust
security framework, our security protocol also includes educating
our users with informational content via our online and social
platforms, as well as through in-app prompts to encourage users to
enable their 2FA, and avoid phishing attacks, dubious websites and
other kinds of cyber threats. Q: What are your plans with Coinhako?
How do you intend to improve it further? A: As the new CISO, I am
excited to bring to Coinhako my extensive experience from various
industries and different companies. Part of my plan includes
growing our cybersecurity capabilities through refining and
adopting new technologies and protocols. As the company is scaling
up operations, the plan also includes increasing the security
team’s headcount, which will be instrumental in expanding our
company’s technological capability and maturity. Q: When were you
first introduced to cryptocurrencies? What were your roles and
responsibilities before joining Coinhako? A: My first foray into
cryptocurrencies was in 2012. I read about Bitcoin and decided to
buy a few back then, just for fun. I wish I still had them! For the
last 22 years, I have been working in the cybersecurity industry
and have held various positions such as CISO and lead consultant.
Also, I am a cybersecurity entrepreneur and co-founded two
cybersecurity firms over the course of my career. Q: Would you wish
to educate our readers on the best practices to safeguard their
crypto assets and protect themselves from cybercriminals? A: The
first rule of thumb is never click any message, link or file on the
same device that you use for managing your digital assets. It is
good practice to use 2FA for authentication but don’t rely on it to
save you from a mis-click if a phishing attack is successful. Q:
What are your thoughts on cybercrime and crypto’s role in it? How
is it different from pre-crypto days? A: Cybercrime is evolving all
the time and due to the anonymity of crypto, cryptocurrencies have
been one of the preferred payment methods for cybercrime. However,
they represent only a small percentage of the entire digital asset
industry as cash is still the go-to medium for illicit payments. In
the early years of cryptocurrencies, cybercriminals used to get
paid in bitcoin and could launder their money with ease. But with
the maturity of the crypto space, coupled with the transparency of
blockchain payments, law enforcement agencies are becoming more
knowledgeable of the workings of crypto and getting pretty good at
investigations. Anti-crime efforts have to be consistent as
perpetrators are constantly looking for opportunities to conduct
illegal activities, so a huge shout-out to private institutions and
regulators who are working tirelessly to mitigate such illicit
activities. Q: What are the common threats faced by crypto
exchanges and businesses these days? How to mitigate them? A: Crime
syndicates generally have the same modus operandi for most attacks
on exchanges and businesses. They typically try to illegally obtain
assets from end customers through phishing attacks. Threat actors
also target the exchanges by trying to infiltrate the systems via
exposed systems or by hacking the employees. From our experience,
the prime goal of such attacks is to steal customer data and the
private encryption keys of the exchanges. Over the past months, we
have seen a spike in such attacks. Mitigation of these threats
requires a layered defense approach. As such, having a robust
security framework consisting of multiple defensive controls to
prevent, detect and react to attacks is especially important in
ensuring the integrity of our platform and to protect our users’
assets. Q: Would you like to share your vision of the crypto
industry with our readers? How do people stand to benefit from it,
especially with few governments attempting to stifle it with strict
regulations? A: The last two years have seen cryptocurrencies
reaching mainstream consciousness. I posit that their adoption
curve is just beginning though. We will continue to see extensive
growth in value and adoption in both B2C and B2B. There will always
be countries that want to benefit from this growth and these
countries will have to put in place laws and governance that ensure
that players in the market don’t cause excessive risks. Taking a
responsible approach toward crypto will ensure that the industry
gains maturity and trust in the eyes of society, consumers and
lawmakers. Developing trust is paramount and will take some time,
but it is inevitable too. Q: Anything else you think our readers
should know about? A: I think cryptocurrencies are a great learning
opportunity for everyone. They are effectuating a radical change in
the financial ecosystem and beyond, and I believe crypto will
modernize the global financial system like the Internet did to the
exchange of ideas and information.
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