Fortra Joins With Microsoft, Health-ISAC to Combat Cobalt Blue Fraud

Bob Erdman of Fortra joins Dark Reading’s News Desk to talk about why his company teamed with Microsoft and Health-ISAC to crack down on illegal copies of Cobalt Blue, Fortra’s adversary simulation tool. He describes what each partner brings to the effort, how Fortra discourages illegal use of its software, and the impact the vendor seen so far. Erdman also summarizes the message Fortra wants to send criminals trying to use cracked copies of Cobalt Strike.

About the Speaker: Bob Erdman joined Fortra in 2017 after having spent more than 25 years in the information technology industry and currently serves as Fortra’s Associate VP, Research & Development.

In this role, Bob leads Fortra’s Cyber Intelligence team (FACIT) building offensive and defensive security products, researching business email compromise (BEC), advanced persistent threats (APTs) and malware groups, and enhancing security solutions with ML/AI to protect customers’ environments around the world. Prior to this, Bob served as Fortra’s Sr. Manager Product Management, Cyber Threat Solutions. Bob routinely collaborates with external public and private partners and recently was part of the global action to combat malicious usage of Cobalt Strike.

Prior to joining Fortra, Bob was at Spok where he most recently served as Sr. Technical Product Manager, Contact Centers & Platforms. While there, Bob worked with a variety of worldwide customers including government, healthcare, financial and military implementing mission critical Windows, Unix and Linux communications solutions.

Bob has is a veteran of the United States Army National Guard and a current member of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s InfraGard Cyber Health Working Group. He has presented at multiple industry conferences and events including NFCTA Disruption, IT-ISAC and IBM TechU.