The University of California at San Francisco announced recently that it paid a $1.14 million ransom to regain access to medical school data that was encrypted during a ransomware attack. The incident illustrates a disturbing trend — ransomware attacks are steadily increasing, as are the ransom amounts being demanded. The average ransom demanded in attacks [...]
Firewalls have been an essential first line of defense in network security for decades, serving as the gatekeeper between internal network resources and the outside world. However, mismanaged or misconfigured firewalls are barely better than having no firewall at all. The massive Capital One breach last year illustrates the danger. A misconfigured firewall rule enabled [...]
Even with advanced technologies available to hackers, what technique do they use most often to gain access to sensitive data or spread malware? Phishing attacks. Hackers know it’s much easier to trick a human with a deceptive email than it is to trick or circumvent security software. Instead of trying to pick a lock, they [...]
It’s the most wonderful time of the year — for cybercriminals. We’ve entered the peak season for cybercrime, with various studies indicating that cyberattacks increase by up to 60 percent during the holidays. The Department of Homeland Security recently warned of an expected spike in a range of malicious activity, including unsolicited emails that contain [...]
Many organizations rely upon their employees prevent cybersecurity breaches. Employees are advised not to click on unknown links and attachments, share their user credentials, or use unapproved applications and services. And for the most part this strategy works — in a recent study conducted by Sapio Research, 79 percent of information security leaders said that [...]
Personally identifiable information (PII) is the holy grail when it comes to cybercrime. Hackers know PII can be sold easily on the dark web or used to commit identity theft. Healthcare and tax-related information is particularly valuable as it enables criminals to commit fraud over a long period of time without getting caught. While more [...]
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Google Suite, Dropbox and QuickBooks have made it easier for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) to adopt cloud services. In fact, Office 365 is by far the most popular cloud platform by user count, with global usage increasing from 34 percent in 2016 to 56 percent [...]
In a recent study conducted by MSI-ACI Europe, 61 percent of IT professionals said senior executives expect more lenient security policies for themselves than everyone else. For 65 percent of study participants, that leniency resulted in more data breaches. The obvious question is, shouldn’t it be the other way around? Given the increasingly perilous threat [...]
Ransomware is still a serious problem. But as awareness has increased and security measures have been enhanced, more hackers are turning to cryptojacking to make money. In fact, the number of cryptojacking attacks was nearly double the number of ransomware attacks in 2018, according to a recent report from IBM Security. Cryptojacking is the unauthorized [...]
When you’re constantly scrambling to keep the lights on and serve customers, it can seem expedient to make a user happy by changing a configuration, installing a new application, or adding a new device or service that the user requested. This may put out the fire of the moment, but it can also make your [...]
