BlackBerry Ltd.

01/22/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 01/22/2025 17:18

Intercepted Communications: ‘The Risks Are Much Higher’

Intercepted Communications: 'The Risks Are Much Higher'

These are busy times if you're a thought leader and expert in secure communications. Just ask David Wiseman, who is Vice President of Secure Communications at BlackBerry. Since the Salt Typhoon attacks against communications infrastructure revealed The Hidden Risks in Telecom Networks, Wiseman's appeared in dozens of publications, podcasts and newscasts around the globe.

Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise, since Wiseman is an expert on BlackBerry® SecuSUITE® which currently secures communications at NATO, the world's largest governments, and leading enterprise organizations.

One of his recent appearances was on Ticker News, which covers breaking news in business, markets, politics and technology. Wiseman was asked about the state of cybersecurity when it comes to securing phone calls, text messages and the related data.

Overview of Secure Communications Risk

Here is a brief transcript of Wiseman's interview, which was an easy to follow conversation around the new challenges organizations and governments face, related to secure communications.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
Let's talk about the biggest threats in 2025 when it comes to cyberthreats, what do you see?

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
I think the fact that telecom networks are the primary targets, and threat actors are really going after people's data on the network versus on their devices, is the big story for the year.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
That is incredible, right? Apple talks a lot about its privacy. Everyone talks a lot about their privacy, and it's a huge deal on-device. We see billboards all over the place, but the idea that it [an attack] actually could be happening within the network. How does that happen?

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
If we look at the Salt Typhoon attacks in the United States that targeted government officials as well as, it turns out, the broader population: Basically, they're able to intercept at the network level including voice calls, messages, and who you're communicating with. This is really driving a new set of attacks where they don't have to get to your phone specifically.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
Wow. So when you say messages, do you mean the data messages, or do you mean the old-fashioned text messages. Is there any difference?

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
Primarily, this would be the traditional text messages. One of the things that CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) recommended is that people move to end-to-end encrypted application messaging, which can help mitigate at least portions of the problem.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
I mean, that's what Blackberry has always been famous for, right, in terms of that end-to-end encryption, as well. Talk to us about cybersecurity as a plan, and what you have witnessed throughout your career as things change, and particularly, recently.

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
It's a never-ending battle on the cybersecurity front, and as you move to new applications, new platforms, there are new ways of attacking it. But at the end of the day, the overall goal is the same. How can some people get information that's valuable from you and either use that against you or use that for their own financial benefit?

We've gone from either malware attacks to ransomware attacks and now it's becoming very targeted, very individualistic. One of the things we need to think about is that the telephone networks were designed for reachability. Anyone can reach anyone. They weren't primarily designed for security, and that's always going to be the case. But also, as you move to this end-to-end encryption, you must start thinking about deep fake identity attacks.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
It's funny, if you watch documentaries about the Cold War, they've got these devices that attach to phone lines. And that's how they're able to spy on what different people were doing and the work happening in governments. As a private individual, I often hear these stories, and there's probably people watching this right now thinking: Well, if I was a government worker, I'd probably be in a bit of trouble, and especially if I was a prime minister or a president, someone might be trying to listen to what I have to say. But as a private individual and citizen who works for an organization, how big a threat do you see it? And how can we protect against these sorts of risks?

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
I think individuals that work for larger corporations and larger entities, particularly those that work globally, are actually a threat in terms of economic espionage, in terms of IP (intellectual property) being stolen. And you may not feel that the information you specifically are sharing, or talking with someone about, is that important. But with the AI ability to aggregate and sift through millions of these captured sets of information, they can easily be consolidated into a theft of very valuable information - by combining information across multiple conversations.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
I mentioned BlackBerry before. What role does BlackBerry play in tackling these sorts of threats?

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
We focus on secure communications. Historically, we've done a lot of protecting the devices themselves from attack and helping you manage those and while we continue to do that, we also specialize in encrypted communications with government grade security. We've been doing that for over a decade, but we now provide that capability to both businesses and governments around the world. The end-to-end encryption is just the first step. We take it to the next level of giving you the same security you need as though you were a government official transmitting secret information.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
So David, you've got a pretty incredible title, meaning that you're right at the forefront of this. You've been watching developments and you've been watching this change. How is it changing? How big of a threat has it become?

David Wiseman, BlackBerry SecuSUITE:
I think it's become a really huge threat because of the amount of information that can be quickly consolidated now by applying the AI models. You can start to tune and build deep fakes. You can trick people into giving you information at a scale that was never possible before, and with the advances in data lakes and the ability to aggregate this information over time, the risks are much higher that someone's going to get valuable information from observing the communications of a particular person or a particular company.

Ticker News Anchor Ahron Young:
David Wiseman, from BlackBerry, we appreciate your time here on Ticker from DC.

Communications Security: Learn More

The Salt Typhoon attacks against internet service providers (ISPs) and telecommunications companies are just the latest examples around intercepted and compromised communications. There are also numerous Communications Security Lessons Learned from Ukraine.

Now is the time to make secure communications part of your organization's holistic cyber defense. Learn more about BlackBerry SecuSUITE, or reach out for a conversation.

About Bruce Sussman

Bruce Sussman is Managing Editor Director at BlackBerry.

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