With ransomware, pay up if you want to keep paying
A hospital CEO is contacted in the middle of the night with a dire warning. Hackers have taken control of computer systems used for patient care, CT scans, and lab work. The hacker wants money. Rather than pay the ransom, the hospital CEO enlists several experts to try to break back into the system. It…
UK Parliament Cuts Email Access After Cyberattack
Britain’s parliament shut down external access to e-mail accounts on Saturday following a cyberattack. Parliamentary authorities described the attack as “sustained and determined”, in an email sent to lawmakers and published by the Daily Telegraph. “Earlier this morning we discovered unusual activity and evidence of an attempted cyberattack on our computer network,” it read. “Closer…
Configuration Error Embarrasses UK’s Cyber Essentials
The UK government’s Cyber Essentials scheme has suffered an embarrassing incident; but one that can hardly be called a breach and certainly not a cyber-attack. A configuration error in the underlying software platform exposed the email addresses of consultancies registered with the scheme — nothing more. Cyber Essentials is a UK government-backed certification scheme designed…
WannaCry? You’re Not Alone: The 5 Stages of Security Grief
When it comes to securing the enterprise, the attackers have the advantage. Defenders are required to protect against every conceivable threat while the attacker needs only a single attack vector to penetrate a network. The universe of potential intrusion vectors is vast: faulty authentication mechanisms, gaps in the perimeter network, legacy applications, and, of course,…
Honda Halts Production at Japan Plant After Cyber Attacks
Honda said Wednesday it had temporarily halted production at a plant in Japan after it suffered a cyberattack from the same ransomware that struck hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide last month. The Japanese automaker said it had shut its plant in Sayama, near Tokyo, on Monday after discovering its computer system was infected with…
Understanding Looming Threats and the Need to Hunt With Anonymity
Situational awareness is critical in every kind of engagement. The internet is no exception. Effectively all modern conflicts take place, at least in part, online. To understand the threats you will inevitably face, you need to go hunting outside your perimeter. Only by surreptitiously monitoring and engaging with potential attackers and malware developers will you…
Cloud Security & the Power of Shared Responsibility
When you and your CSP jointly embrace the shared security responsibility model you can achieve greater success than you or your provider can achieve alone. When you’re a toddler, you think the world revolves around you, and your personal constitution has one word in it: “mine!” As you grow and develop some wisdom, you recognize…
Why WannaCry Was a Wake Up Call for Critical Infrastructure Security
The WannaCry ransomware attack impacted more than 10,000 organizations in 150 countries, including manufacturing and industrial organizations like Nissan, Renault and Dacia, Spanish Telefónica and Deutsche Bahn. It’s likely that a fair number of industrial organizations have been impacted, but haven’t reported the incidents since they are not required to do so by regulatory requirements.
North Korea’s DDoS Attacks Analyzed Based on IPs
Arbor Networks has used the IP addresses shared recently by United States authorities to analyze distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks attributed to the North Korean government. The security firm believes the data may not be as useful for organizations as the U.S. hopes. Earlier this month, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) released a…
Know the Odds: The Cost of a Data Breach in 2017
We’ve all heard that when it comes to experiencing a data breach, the question is not if it will happen, but when. You may be wondering about the actual odds of it happening to your organization. Think about it this way: The chances of being struck by lightning this year are 1 in 960,000. When…