The FBI identified at least 16 Conti ransomware attacks targeting U.S. healthcare and first responder networks, including law enforcement agencies, emergency medical services, 9-1-1 dispatch centers, and municipalities within the last year. These healthcare and first responder networks are among the more than 400 organizations worldwide victimized by Conti, over 290 of which are located in the U.S.
The increase in cyber insurance adoption and premium prices coincides with a changing — and more challenging — threat landscape, this according to a new GAO report on cyber insurance. The report describes key trends in the current market for cyber insurance, and identified challenges faced by the cyber insurance market and options to address them. To conduct the study, GAO analyzed industry data on cyber insurance policies; reviewed reports on cyber risk and cyber insurance from researchers, think tanks, and the insurance industry; and interviewed Treasury officials.
Nuspire, managed security services provider (MSSP), announced the appointment of industry veteran, J.R. Cunningham, as Chief Security Officer. In this role, Cunningham will oversee Nuspire’s security strategy, oversight of policies and compliance, and the new Nuspire Security Program, which is a step-by-step program designed to help Nuspire’s customers build customizable security programs. Cunningham joins Nuspire with over 25 years of experience, building and maintaining security programs, security strategy consulting, cyber practitioner leadership and creating successful long-term client relationships through strategic consulting. I
Palo Alto Cortex Xpanse research team spent the first three months of 2021 monitoring the activities of attackers to better understand how much of an edge adversaries have in detecting systems that are vulnerable to attack. They followed a benchmark that they call “mean time to inventory” (MTTI), which is simply how long it takes somebody to start scanning for a vulnerability after it’s announced.
Xpanse research found 79% of observed exposures occurred in the cloud.
In the aftermath of the Colonial Pipeline attack, global IT association and learning community ISACA polled more than 1,200 members in the United States and found that 84% of respondents believe ransomware attacks will become more prevalent in the second half of 2021. The Colonial Pipeline attack caused massive disruptions to gasoline distribution in parts of the US this month, resurfacing preparedness for ransomware attacks as a front-burner topic for enterprises around the world. Colonial reportedly authorized a ransom payment of US $4.4 million. In the ISACA survey, four out of five survey respondents say they do not think their organization would pay the ransom if a ransomware attack hit their organization. Only 22% say a critical infrastructure organization should pay the ransom if attacked.
Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks - when an attacker attempts to make it impossible for a service to be deliverable - are increasing in size, frequency and duration. Kaspersky Lab reported a doubling of DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, plus an 80% jump compared with the same quarter last year. To learn more about how these attacks have evolved over the years, we talk to Roy Horev, Co-Founder and CTO at Vulcan Cyber, a vulnerability remediation orchestration provider.
As employees return back to the office, challenges continue to unfold and the best way to approach many of the computers and systems that have been off company premises for so long is to regard them as potentially infected.
As employees return back to the office, challenges continue to unfold and the best way to approach many of the computers and systems that have been off company premises for so long is to regard them as potentially infected.
