Social engineering through sports sites
Just a couple of months ago I was contemplating creating an account for NBA.com to vote for their All-Star Game. Concerns over security of my data was one reason I abstained, and perhaps it was for good reason. The league recently sent out a data breach notification to fans that, although its own systems… Read More
Data Breaches – A Healthcare Crisis
Healthcare for IT involves protecting many types of data for various kinds of patients. A recent breach of the platform Cerebral, an online therapy and medication management system, has exposed the data of 3.1 million patients seeking care for their mental health. The verdict was that Cerebral had “disclosed certain information that may be regulated… Read More
Hackers Seek Riches: Protect Your Data
Data security is often a matter of national security. A cyber intrusion against the US Marshals Service demonstrates nothing less. Describing it as a major incident, the agency announced ransomware had targeted a system that subsequently had to be disconnected. “The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information,… Read More
Healthcare hackers and complex regulations
Despite the slight trend down over the past couple of years, the number of breaches targeting the healthcare industry is still higher than it was pre-pandemic. Hackers are carrying out more sophisticated, flexible breaches that also impact more individuals in total (an increase of 35% to reach 28 million in the second half of 2022). … Read More
Public eye on data security
Are you or your organization running VMWare’s ESXi software on virtual computers? If so, you may have been a target in a recent ransomware scheme. Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN) announced the breach last week, in which hackers went after thousands of computer servers around the world. Most of these were in the US, France… Read More
Google Fi and T-Mobile’s Breaches
Last week’s big story was about the data breach of Google Fi, Google’s cell network provider. This is apparently part of the wider T-Mobile breach from last month, in which 37 million customers had their personal information stolen. Google Fi uses T-Mobile in part for its network connectivity, and “suspicious activity” of a third-party system… Read More
A flurry of hacker activity
A data breach of the marketing platform MailChimp has, in turn, led to one for sports betting firm FanDuel, and a warning to users about potential phishing scams as a result. Fortunately the total number of affected people was minor. This is nevertheless another instance of a third-party vendor falling for a social engineering scheme… Read More
Twitter Breach Takes a Turn
A new year means new challenges. It can also mean resolving old challenges, however, which continue to manifest their not so pretty heads. Everyone may have already heard of the massive Twitter data breach from last year: accessing a cache of non-public user data from December of 2021, cyber criminals went on to sell it… Read More
Honing in on data protection
Security Boulevard has cited the inequality in data protection efficiency among different organizations can be a yardstick by which they can differentiate themselves from the competition: another view to incentivize good data security. How does this reflect in practice? The benefits are many. Increasing trust and loyalty among customers; mitigating the risk of a data… Read More
Data dangers for hospitals
Cyber crime that bombards healthcare organizations can put people’s lives at risk. This is a known fact, and if anyone doesn’t know it, incidents like that at the Hospital Centre of Versailles, in Paris, should serve to further demonstrate. Consisting of several different hospitals, the complex was forced to cancel operations after a cyber attack… Read More