2017 illustrated a significantly lower barrier-of-entry to the world of cybercrime with the emergence of malware-as-a-service, with user profile names and credit card numbers readily available on the Dark Web and distribution of 20,000 messages for just $40.
As ransomware continues to gain notoriety, cybercriminals are looking for more ways to get the most out of the malware that they develop. Similarly, other bad actors who may lack the necessary skills to develop malware themselves are looking for a way to get in on the action. This has led to an increase in ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), a practice in which cybercriminals put their ransomware up for sale, where it is purchased and leveraged by other criminals who are technically unable to develop their own variants.
With dozens of breaches and millions left violated, 2017 has witnessed a historic amount of hacking. This year has been stained with numerous hacking incidents, including WannaCry, Petya and Cloudbleed. Of these many cases, the Equifax data breach can be crowned the most significant hack of the year, having exposed the personal data of nearly 148 million people.
With companies’ reputations and futures becoming more inherently tied to their cybersecurity efforts, Security magazine connected with Kevin Richards, managing director of North American Security and global lead for Security Strategy and Risk at Accenture, to discuss the outcomes of negligent cybersecurity oversight during mergers and acquisitions.
Consumers are confident they’re safe online, but hackers have proven otherwise, stealing $172 billion from 978 million consumers in 20 countries in the past year, according to the 2017 Norton Cyber Security Insights Report.
An annual analysis by the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) found that cyber incidents targeting businesses nearly doubled over the last year from 82,000 in 2016 to 159,700 in 2017.
The famous countdown clock in Times Square has just ushered in 2018, but there’s another clock that’s ticking – the one that marks the coming of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This new set of stringent rules governing data protection massively impacts organizations around the world. Is your enterprise prepared?
