The annual OSAC Achievement Awards for 2020 took place via a virtual video reception. The awards honor to U.S. Department of State employees or groups and private-sector individuals. Read on to learn about this year's recipients.
Lookout, Inc. announced the discovery of Goontact, a new spyware targeting iOS and Android users in multiple Asian countries. Uncovered by the Lookout Threat Intelligence team, Goontact targets users of illicit sites and steals personal information stored on their mobile devices. Evidence shows these sextortion scams are affecting Chinese-, Japanese- and Korean-speaking people. Goontact may also be operating in Thailand and Vietnam. Lookout discovered evidence the campaign may have been active since 2018 and is still active today.
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Port San Antonio have partnered to expand the region’s cybersecurity and data analytics research and development ecosystem and increase workforce education and training.
The 16th annual (Organized Retail Crime) ORC study released by the National Retail Federation found 75% of loss prevention executives at a cross-section of large and mid-sized retail companies said ORC activity had increased in the past year, up from 68% last year.
The Port of Los Angeles is creating a Port Cyber Resilience Center (CRC) that will help protect the organization's supply chain from cyber-related breaches. The CRC will be a maritime Security Intelligence and Operations Center (SIOC) to automate threat collaboration and extend its reach beyond traditional maritime stakeholders to Port stakeholders that are more broadly involved in cargo flow, such cross-sector companies.
Dashlane announced the findings of its new Workplace Security Survey which looked at employee sentiment and habits around workplace security practices—and who the responsibilities should fall on. As many companies continue to grapple with a remote workforce, overall employee security measures become more critical, especially as many are relying on personal devices and networks for work. The online survey, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Dashlane among over 1,200 employed U.S. Americans, sheds light on how employees view and manage company security—and reveals they aren’t necessarily taking the security of their work accounts as seriously as they should.
One Identity released global survey results that revealed that 37% of IT professionals rated rapid changes in their AD/AAD environment as the key impact of COVID-19 on their organization’s identity management team. Given the unique challenges of the sudden shift to remote work amidst COVID-19, businesses should look toward integrating AD/AAD with a strong privileged access management (PAM) solution in order to harness the full value of AD and AAD, dramatically increasing the security of their IT environments.
CISA, MITRE, and GMU collaborated to explore and analyze current and evolving security procedures and technologies to improve school security—primarily against active assailants
December 15, 2020
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a report from a School Security Simulation Experiment (SIMEX) focused on current security procedures and technologies to improve both physical and operational security in K-12 schools. The two-week SIMEX, conducted jointly with MITRE and George Mason University in August, served as a pilot to determine whether a SIMEX is a viable tool that can be used to evaluate policies, technologies, and procedures related to school safety in the future.
The US Secret Service hosted a virtual Cyber Incident Response Simulation for financial services, real estate, retail and hospitality executives who trained on mitigation strategies for a simulated business email compromise (BEC) attack. Business Email Compromise is a sophisticated scam targeting both businesses and individuals performing a transfer of funds. The scam is frequently carried out when a subject compromises legitimate business e-mail accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds.