SolarWinds breach saga continues in the new year
Beginning the cyber New Year in 2021 apparently involves learning that the SolarWinds data breach was more substantial in scope than previously thought. What it boils down to is the fact that approximately 250 government and private networks, rather than the dozens initially thought, were compromised by suspected Russian intelligence services seeking to exploit a… Read More
Approaching cybersecurity in 2021
As we move into the New Year, cybersecurity continues as ever to evolve in various ways. Of course, this would have been true even in less disruptive times. The challenges brought about by a global pandemic and mass shutdowns have necessitated creative, out of the box approaches to protecting data. Remote working provoked new strategies… Read More
US federal agencies announce data breach
We mentioned recently the acknowledged importance of cybersecurity in the realm of finance and national security. Now those attitudes will once more be put to the test. The breaking story this week, of course, is how hackers breached the US Treasury and Commerce departments through an IT security vendor called SolarWinds. The scope of SolarWinds’… Read More
Examining cybersecurity before holiday shopping
While October is Cyber Security Awareness month, it turns out November 30 was Computer Security Day. As the holiday season now coming upon a quarantined populace, it can be useful to examine how things stand in the field of cybersecurity, since few things have such an impact on consumer shopping online. According to a study… Read More
Global cyber breaches hit various sectors
Cybersecurity breaches are a risk no matter what the industry, or where you are located. Just last week, the UK soccer/football team Manchester United revealed an intrusion that compromised its systems. Although their investigation has not yet confirmed whether hackers could access the data of fans and customers, they were quick to assure that their… Read More
Cybersecurity breaches in video games
A couple of video game related data breaches are in the news this week. Capcom has just posted a press release to its site about a breach it announced earlier this month, in which unauthorized access to the network led to a ransomware attack that destroyed and locked data on its servers and deleted access… Read More
How COVID impacts cybersecurity incidents
Many cybersecurity incidents have, unsurprisingly, become subject to the influence of COVID. According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), more than 200 of 723 reviewed incidents qualify as being related to the pandemic. We’ve covered a fair bit in the past how phishing schemes exploit people’s worries over the virus to trick them… Read More
Hackers Hit Therapy Center for Patient Data
Pandemic-induced stress and anxiety are on a constant rise, according to all reports, and the demand for therapy has thus never been higher. Hackers are taking notice. In Finland, we now have reports of a psychotherapy center experiencing a data breach. Approximately 300 patients of the practice, which is operated by a company called Vastaamo,… Read More
Data security for kids and restaurants
Regulators in Europe are laying out fines for companies that come up short in data protection. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has recently hit British Airways for £20 million, over a data breach involving 400,000 customers. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, meanwhile, came into existence in 2018 and acts as the EU’s GDPR compliance regulator. During… Read More
Phishing scheme utilizes CAPTCHA against Microsoft users
Does anybody really like CAPTCHAS? Those little verification boxes on website login pages that ask you to check a box, or click on all the images with street lights…and then you do and somehow it still fails but if stick with it you can eventually log in, probably. Anyway, they are perhaps a necessary evil,… Read More