FireEye: Becoming even harder to identify and track cybercriminals

Cybercriminals, largely motivated by breaching networks to steal money and collect personal information, are becoming more difficult to identify, according to a leading cybersecurity expert.

"In 2010, when responding to breaches, almost every time we'd look at the evidence and we kinda knew who [the hackers] were," said Kevin Mandia, president of FireEye, in a statement published by Re/Code. "Right now we're starting to get more groups that we're labeling unknown. We have like 400 of them."

There is increased focus on cybersecurity, but trying to accurately identify and track threat actors - while preventing them from breaching networks - is an extremely complex issue. Unfortunately, companies must realize that they are likely to suffer a data breach at some point, and should focus more on breach crisis to ensure they can bounce back as quickly as possible.

Mandia also offered advice to company executives regarding staying secure: make sure email responses are short, with important conversations transferred from company servers to their own servers connected to an Apple iPad - as the "target surface" is still relatively small.