Good news on the cybercrime front: "Cryptocurrency-related crime fell significantly in 2020," compared to 2019, reports blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. Unfortunately, in the same timeframe, ransomware profits surged 311%, stoking calls for a crackdown on ransom payments.
Privacy watchdogs in Europe have imposed fines totaling more than $330 million since the EU's General Data Protection Regulation went into full effect in May 2018, according to law firm DLA Piper. Over the past year, regulators received 121,000 data breach notifications, up 19% from the year before.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency says a ransomware attack last month continues to cause serious outages and warns that ransom-demanding attackers also stole some data. The Conti ransomware-as-a-service operation has claimed credit for the attack and begun to leak the stolen data.
An investigation at the U.S. Treasury Department has found that it suffered a "significant" breach as a result of the SolarWinds Orion supply chain attack, a top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee reports. Meanwhile President-elect Joe Biden said of the attack: "I promise you, there will be a response."
Hackers who infiltrated government and business networks via a stealthy backdoor added to SolarWinds' Orion software appear to have focused on only the most high-value targets, leading to about 50 organizations being "genuinely impacted," says FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia.
The U.K. is moving to improve its ability to combat online attacks via the establishment of an information warfare network named @HutEighteen. The move, announced by the Defense Academy of the United Kingdom, follows fresh EU sanctions against nation-state hackers and the U.K. standing up a National Cyber Force.
Andy Bates, executive director of the Global Cyber Alliance, shares his insights on key cybersecurity and fraud challenges facing UK organizations in the year ahead, with an emphasis on:
Emerging threats
IoT vulnerabilities
How defenders and defenses must adapt
Security experts are urging organizations to patch a newly revealed serious flaw in Microsoft SharePoint as quickly as possible because proof-of-concept exploit code is already available. The U.K.'s National Cyber Security Center warns that hackers frequently target fresh SharePoint flaws.
Ransomware attacks remain the top cyber-enabled threat seen by law enforcement. But phishing, business email compromises and other types of fraud - many now using a COVID-19 theme - also loom large, Europol warns in its latest Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment.
According to EY, consumers, regulations, and business concerns are driving UK public and private sector industries to re-examine their data disposition processes, particularly for sensitive and personal information. We'll show how UK enterprises can ensure data security at data end-of-life, comply with data protection...
What's one of the worst things that can happen during a pandemic? The answer is anything that gives people less reason to trust in their public health system to handle the crisis. Enter a data breach that has exposed personal information for everyone who's ever tested positive for the disease in Wales.
Recent hacking incidents, including one targeting Twitter, are raising awareness of the importance of privileged access management, says David Boda, group head of information security for Camelot Group, operator of the U.K. National Lottery. He describes PAM best practices.
The latest edition of the ISMG Security Report features a discusssion with Equifax CISO, Jamil Farshchi, on the lessons learned from the credit reporting firm's massive data breach three years ago. Also featured: Australians' driver's licenses leaked; privileged access management tips.
The number of cybersecurity incidents reported to the U.K.'s data privacy watchdog has continued to decline, recently plummeting by nearly 40%. But is the quantity of data breaches going down, or might organizations be failing to spot them or potentially even covering them up?
The need for enhanced business agility and secure remote access to support digital transformation has led to the adoption of the security access service edge, or SASE, model, says Rajpreet Kaur, senior principal analyst at Gartner.
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