Hi, I'm Ryan Levy.

Welcome to Cyber reasons Malicious Life. Broadly speaking, there are two good reasons why financial markets make good targets for criminals, cyber or otherwise.

Firstly, simply, it's where a lot of the money is. In the week this podcast episode was written, Daily Trading Volume on the New York Stock Exchange

average 2.3 billion dollars.

On the NASDAQ, 2 billion dollars. On the Chicago Board Options Exchange, 1.5 billion.

Altogether, then, the United States' three biggest stock markets combined for nearly six billion dollars worth of

trades every day. 30 billion in a week. And that's not even taking into account

the multi-billion dollar per day for an exchange market.

Finance isn't all about money, though.

It's our jobs and salaries.

The prices we pay for things, the quality of products and salaries. The prices we pay for things the quality of products and services we receive.

By nature, it is fast-moving and highly interconnected system, with companies relating to other companies and investors and banks in every corner of the world

every player forming one tiny nook in a giant web.

That's why even something seemingly insignificant can trigger a disruption to the entire world.

Like how something called a mortgage-backed security caused such a chaos in America that the effects were felt

even a decade later all the way in Asia. You'd have to say that short of electricity and running water, there are few systems so vital to modern society as financial markets.

Few systems so fragile with the potential for truly catastrophic consequences.

In the lower floors of an 11-story office building located in suburban Washington DC,

sit a cross-fit gem and a fondue restaurant.

If you go there, once you're finished working out and eating cheese,

you might take the elevator up to visit the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, assuming you have clearance, of course.

NCCIC is the home of cyber threat analysis and response for the United States government.

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