For most of this year, COVID-19 has dominated and disrupted our normal business routines, and as we relocated to avoid the first wave of the virus, the hackers and thieves weren’t far behind. As people began working remotely in large numbers, the number of unsecured remote desktops soared, as did brute-force attacks against those desktops.
In its quarterly report, toy maker Mattel announced it was the victim of a ransomware attack on its information technology systems that caused data on a number of systems to be encrypted in July 2020.
Willapa Medical Clinic in South Bend, Wash., was looking for a solution to speed up registration and smooth out the check-in process at the office, helping to limit COVID-19 exposure as much as possible. Before implementing the touchless solution, the Clinic's staff was reaching through the registration window to take everyone's temperature with a tympanic thermometer.
Japanese gaming giant Capcom has disclosed a data breach which led to unauthorized access of some files and systems. The developer claimed that the incident impacted email and file servers, among other systems.
“The same risks that apply to any organization apply to a school system as well,” says John Clark, Director of Safety and Security for Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS). “The difference is we’re dealing with kids. So, we must make our training age appropriate. We have to understand the audience at all times, but we still want the same outcome at the end of the day, which is a safe and secure environment.”
While the first thing that may come to mind is attacks on voter booths and polling data, hackers were expected to hit more vulnerable targets first, such as community-based organizations and systems supporting political campaigns.
These networks are rarely designed to withstand the ransomware threats much larger, established political bodies face, and hackers know it.
Here, we talk to Doug Matthews, Vice President of Product Management for Veritas, about the conditions impacting data protection during the election period.
Estimated at 40% of all internet traffic, bots perform a variety of both critical and criminal operations. The sophistication of emerging bots is creating problems for traditional detection tools.
Cybercriminals quickly weaved the pandemic into their email scams earlier this year, and more recently impersonated the IRS by pretending to share updates about COVID tax relief in an attempt to steal sensitive tax information. In mid-April, Google’s Threat Analysis Group reported that they detected 18 million COVID-19 themed malware and phishing emails per day. And that’s without including all the email impersonation, invoice fraud, and phishing attacks that have nothing to do with COVID, but are dangerous nonetheless.
In this article, I will provide some tips to help individuals and organizations communicate more securely over email.
By now, it’s no secret that the endless quest by tech companies, data brokers and other players to capture, make sense of and monetize as much user data as possible – a practice known as surveillance capitalism – presents all sorts of privacy issues. Less discussed are the increased security risks this model creates for companies, governments and individuals.
With the fall season underway and winter looming, states across the U.S. are opening up their grants for applications. There are a number of different programs and types of security grants that organizations can qualify for.
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