In an effort of general threat intelligence I sought to understand what understanding of other criminals could be applied to cyber criminals. What I found was startlingly useless. The difference between our adversaries and traditional criminals is not simply modernity. The dynamics and incentives underlying these advanced actors is fundamentally different from traditional thieves or even organized crime. The closest comparison I have found is the pirates of the late 1600s.Pirate companies share a similar distinction - roaming the seas instead of cyberspace and sailing through significant gaps in international law. They organized together but did so by inventing democratic organization more advanced than the world had seen before. These pirate companies, forced to innovate or die, turned into some of the most progressive companies the world had ever seen. There is a lot of learn from this stunning level of innovation. Drawing from history we can also examine which strategies were successful in stopping pirates - and which failed

Adam Hogan is a field security engineer for CrowdStrike working with threat intelligence and endpoint protection. He has worked as a SOC analyst, intrusion detection consultant and taught security classes across the US and UK before joining a sales team for the privilege of not having to go into the same office every day. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio. His graduate studies were in economics, which makes him an expert in ruining diner parties that turn political.

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