Official: Puerto Rico Govt Loses $2.6M in Phishing Scam
The finance director of the island’s Industrial Development Company, Rubén Rivera, said in a complaint filed to police Wednesday that the agency sent the money to a fraudulent account. Rivera said the government agency transferred the money on Jan. 17 after receiving an email that alleged a change to a banking account tied to remittance…
Seven cybersecurity and privacy forecasts for 2020
The developments in the area of cybersecurity are alarming. As the number of smart devices in private households increases, so do the opportunities for cyber criminals to attack, TÜV Rheinland reveals. Uncontrolled access to personal data undermines confidence in the digital society. The logistics industry and private vehicles are increasingly being targeted by hackers. “From…
Cryptocurrency crime losses more than double to $4.5 billion in 2019
Cryptocurrency users, exchanges and investors suffered $4.5 billion in crypto-related losses resulting from thefts, hacks, and fraud, a CipherTrace report reveals. Cryptocurrency crime losses The lion’s share of those losses stem from the staggering growth of Ponzi schemes, exit scams, and misappropriation of funds crimes, the value of which rose 533 percent year over year….
Security pros anticipate automation will reduce IT security headcount, but not replace human expertise
The majority of companies (77 percent) continue to use or plan to use automation in the next three years, according to a Ponemon Institute and DomainTools survey. The biggest takeaway in this year’s study is that 51 percent of respondents now believe that automation will decrease headcount in the IT security function, an increase from…
Coronavirus-Themed Emails Deliver Malware, Phishing, Scams
The new coronavirus outbreak, which started in China, has made a lot of headlines recently and has caused global panic. Over 40,000 infections have been confirmed and the death toll has exceeded 1,000. The virus has been named 2019-nCoV and Covid-19. Given the virus’s impact, it’s not surprising that cybercriminals and fraudsters have been leveraging…
Credential exposure report: Poor password habits still pose a serious threat
9,050,064,764 credentials have been recovered throughout 2019 which came from a total of 640 unique data breaches and include email addresses connected to plaintext passwords and usernames with plaintext passwords, SpyCloud reveals. That means, on average, each of these data breaches gave criminals more than 14 million sets of login credentials. Because people often reuse…
Organizations struggling to find skilled security staff, leaving 82% of security teams understaffed
83% of IT security professionals feel more overworked going into 2020 than they were at the beginning of 2019, and 82% said their teams were understaffed, according to a Tripwire survey. Hard to find skilled security staff The strain on cybersecurity teams is exacerbated by the inability to find experienced staff, and 85% acknowledged it…
In 2019, a total of 7,098 reported breaches exposed 15.1 billion records
In 2019 the total number of records exposed increased by 284% compared to 2018, according to Risk Based Security. 2019 saw an increase in reported breaches In total, there were over 15.1 billion records exposed shattering industry projections. There were 7,098 breaches reported in 2019, a 1% increase on 2018, though the gap is anticipated…
Cybersecurity in 2020: From secure code to defense in depth
Since 2014, CIOs have flagged cybersecurity as either their first or second most important IT management issue in the venerable IT Trends Study from the Society for Information Management. Yet in 2013, cybersecurity came in just seventh in that same survey. What happened in a year? The infamous Target data breach, which resulted in an…
Battling online coronavirus scams with facts
Panic and confusion about the recent coronavirus outbreak spurred threat actors to launch several malware campaigns across the world, relying on a tried-and-true method to infect people’s machines: fear. Cybercriminals targeted users in Japan with an Emotet campaign that included malicious Word documents that allegedly contained information about coronavirus prevention. Malware embedded into PDFs, MP4s,…