Thanks to Credit Union Times for continuing to be an advocate for information security issues.

As an information security professional, I believe we need voices that advance awareness of the risks we all face from growing cyber threats, such as the ransomware that was the subject of a March 16 article (“Locky Ransomware Infecting 9,000 Systems Daily”). Ransomware is a threat that is rapidly expanding its capabilities and footprint, and it's wreaking havoc along the way.

Cybercriminals' use of ransomware, such as Locky, CryptoLocker and CryptoWall, saw tremendous growth in 2015, a trend that McAfee Labs predicted will escalate among financial institutions and local governments in 2016. Even more troubling, ransomware thieves are refining their skills to cause increasing financial and reputational damage to their victims.