The soaring costs of recovering from a security incident or data breach is driving interest in cyber insurance. While cyber insurance is typically viewed as a product mainly for large organizations seeking coverage and protection against state-sponsored attackers, criminals, and politically motivated hackers, it is also valuable to small and midsized companies and independent contractors….

Threat actors are using messages sent from Dropbox to steal Microsoft user credentials in a fast-growing business email compromise (BEC) campaign. The effort evades natural language processing (NLP)-based security scans, and demonstrates the rapid evolution of these types of attacks. Researchers at Check Point Harmony observed more than 5,000 of the attacks — in which…

Late last year, a group of threat actors managed to obtain “verified publisher” status through the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program (MCPP). This allowed them to surpass levels of brand impersonation ordinarily seen in phishing campaigns, as they distributed malicious applications bolstered by a verified blue badge only ever given to trusted vendors and service providers…

While published trends in ransomware attacks have been contradictory — with some firms tracking more incidents and other fewer — business email compromise (BEC) attacks continue to have proven success against organizations. BEC cases, as a share of all incident-response cases, more than doubled in the second quarter of the year, to 34% from 17%…

When looking at all the different ways that hackers can threaten networks and enterprises, flashy incidents like ransomware scams often come to mind. But a relatively new kind of attack called business email compromise (BEC) has taken the lead in both frequency and overall damage, quickly becoming public enemy number one. According to the FBI’s…

Ransomware spiked 752% in new families

2016 was truly the year of online extortion. Cyber threats reached an all-time high, with ransomware and Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams gaining increased popularity among cybercriminals looking to extort enterprises. A 752 percent increase in new ransomware families ultimately resulted in $1 billion in losses for enterprises worldwide, according to Trend Micro.