Before I get into the data and the stories, I need to tell you who and what this episode is about. David Dean Mauro is one of my closest friends. I don't say that as a marketing hook. I say it because it's true, and because it matters for understanding where this episode comes from.

Dean is a communicator, author, attorney, member of the FBI's InfraGard group, and host of the widely known podcast Cyber Crime Junkies. He spent years as a civil litigator representing cybercrime victims, has been a member of InfraGard for over 18 years, and has run live awareness training sessions alongside actual FBI agents at organizations all over the country. He has seen what these operations do to real people up close, from more angles than most, across more years than he expected when the thread started.

And he wrote a book. It's called Moving Target: The Art of Online Camouflage. In his own words: "This is not an IT book. I don't want you to buy a product. I need you to change your mindset. This is not a security awareness training module. This is a crime book. The crimes are real. The organizations running them are real. The losses are real. And you are already in it, whether you realize it yet or not."

That last line. 'Whether you realize it yet or not.' That's the whole thing. That's what today is about.

Cybercrime is the third largest economy on the planet. Not my words. Documented. Behind the United States and China. It surpassed the global drug trade years ago. Every cartel, every trafficking network, every controlled substance crossing every border in the world combined does not generate the revenue these criminal operations generate in a single calendar year.