Before COVID, cybersecurity was a concern for businesses everywhere. In fact, in Microsoft’s 2019 Global Risk Perception Survey, 57 percent of companies ranked cybersecurity as a higher risk than economic uncertainty and brand reputation or damage. Looking ahead, what does all of this mean for the role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)? Not only is it more important than ever before, but the role has shifted since the start of COVID.
A new Arkose Labs study revealed that in the first half of 2020, there were more than 1.1 billion online fraud attacks, double the attack volume compared to the second half of 2019 and a 25 percent attack rate increase across all transactions.
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) led a group of six senators in introducing the Federal Labor-Management COVID Partnership Act, a bill that would keep federal workers safe during public health emergencies, including the current COVID-19 pandemic, by creating formal labor-management task forces at both the Executive Branch and agency level.
COVID-19 has completely changed our world from six months ago, as we continue to battle the grave health implications, face extended stay at home orders, and grapple with the insurmountable ramifications on our economy. The pandemic has also forever changed the cyber threat landscape, with our workforce becoming more dispersed, and potentially more vulnerable, than ever as organizations switch out of the confines of their offices and move entire data streams to their laptops and home offices. On top of this, Salesforce has announced it is ending its Data Recovery service on July 31st, which is putting all of the data protection responsibilities, and the dire consequences that comes along with it, on the backs of the customer.
A multidisciplinary team of Johns Hopkins University researchers has launched a new website that provides a range of tools dedicated to assessing and guiding K-12 school reopening plans across the United States, including a School Reopening Policy Tracker that provides real-time analysis of the latest guidance documents from every state.
As the head of information security for a technology company with more than a thousand (now mostly-remote) employees, the COVID-19 pandemic has been — among other adjectives — an educational experience. And while it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing, I believe one of the reasons we were able to transition so quickly to remote work with relatively few hiccups is that we established practices to withstand precisely this type of scenario long before the virus swept through our community.
Counterfeiters do not take time off. At its core, counterfeiting preys upon our vulnerabilities and takes advantage of the average customer at any cost. This is particularly true right now during the coronavirus pandemic, the most inconvenient and vulnerable moment in generations. In the midst of mass shortages and colossal demands for certain products, especially in the health field, the counterfeit community has seen a golden opportunity. Over the past few months, tens of millions of new counterfeit products have been seized or identified on the web. These include fraudulent face masks, ventilators, disinfectants and testing kits.
The new COVID-19 Law Lab initiative will gather and share legal documents from over 190 countries across the world to help states establish and implement strong legal frameworks to manage the pandemic. The goal is to ensure that laws protect the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities and that they adhere to international human rights standards, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping for essential and non-essential goods while at home, fraudsters have adapted their technique to use more sophisticated tactics against consumers, banks and merchants.