When the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) get together to issue an alert to warn us about a security threat, you can bet that the threat is real, and that...more
Adding insult to injury for cruise ship company Carnival Corporation (Carnival) following the hit from the pandemic to the travel industry, as well as a class action lawsuit relating to the Diamond Princess’ fate during the...more
8/20/2020
/ Carnival Cruise Lines ,
Cruise Ships ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Form 8-K ,
Hackers ,
Information Technology ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Ransomware
It is being reported by ZDNet that the Maze ransomware group has attacked two companies that apparently refused to pay the requested ransom, so Maze, as it promises, recently released on the Internet approximately 76GB...more
Security researchers are warning companies to be aware of a new resurgence of the Emotet botnet that has been reactivated after a hiatus of five months.
According to the researchers, the Emotet malware steals information,...more
Small health care organizations may think they are under the radar of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), but a settlement the OCR agreed to last week should disabuse small health care providers of that notion....more
Dating sites continue to be the source of compromise of sensitive personal information. Another example of this was discovered recently by security researchers at WizCase, who found that information on millions of users of up...more
It doesn’t matter in which state you are located, how many patients you treat, what kind of medicine you practice or how many employees you have, if you are a health care provider, you are being targeted and hackers are...more
It is being reported by Cointelegraph that ransomware group Netwalker is offering for sale data it exfiltrated from Pennsylvania based Crozer-Keystone Health System after the system declined to pay the requested ransom....more
Some good news in the ransomware world, which is so rare these days.
The Shade (Troldesh) ransomware group has retired and is shutting down. When do you ever hear that a ransomware group is shutting down?...more
The criminals behind the Maze ransomware have gone big and hit Cognizant, one of the largest technology consulting companies in the U.S., with its nasty ransomware....more
Another city—Durham, North Carolina—has become the victim of a ransomware attack stemming from a Russian hacker group following a successful phishing scheme....more
3/13/2020
/ Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Emergency Response ,
Hackers ,
Information Technology ,
Municipalities ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Phishing Scams ,
Ransomware
There’s nothing worse than paying criminals. And paying a ransom for data is just that—paying criminals for a criminal act. All you get out of the payment is access to your data....more
Confirming what we are seeing in the field, cybersecurity firm Cybersecurity Ventures has predicted that, globally, businesses in 2021 will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds, down from every 14 seconds in...more
2/18/2020
/ Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Email ,
Hackers ,
Information Technology ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Phishing Scams ,
Ransomware ,
Risk Management ,
Vulnerability Assessments
Researchers at Sentinel One and Dragos have detected malicious code, called EKANS or Snake, that has been designed specifically to target industrial control systems (ICS), including those of oil refineries, manufacturing...more
2/10/2020
/ Critical Infrastructure Sectors ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Hackers ,
Information Technology ,
Malware ,
Manufacturing Facilities ,
Oil & Gas ,
Pipelines ,
Power Grid ,
Ransomware ,
Refineries ,
Risk Assessment ,
Risk Management ,
Vulnerability Assessments
I am on vacation this week in beautiful Jackson Hole. The skiing is epic, the restaurants amazing, 1921 silver dollars inlaid in the tops of two bars, elk and moose abound, and I’ve had a sighting of several coyotes, a...more
A new report published by Coveware concludes that companies hit with ransomware attacks spend an average of 16 days recovering from the attack. Think about being offline and unable to do business for 16 business days. It is...more
Some app developers know more about our health than our doctors do. Take, for instance, FitBit, which is attached to our wrist and measuring in real time our temperature, our heart rate, our steps and whether we have had...more
1/24/2020
/ 23andMe ,
Consumer Privacy Rights ,
Data Collection ,
Data Management ,
Data Protection ,
Data-Sharing ,
DNA ,
Electronic Medical Records ,
Fitbit ,
Genetic Materials ,
Genetic Testing ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Information Technologies ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
Information Technology ,
Mobile Apps ,
Patients ,
Personal Data ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Telehealth ,
Telemedicine
Pretty much the only time I don’t feel like I am Chicken Little predicting a massive cyber-attack is when I am with my colleagues at the FBI, Secret Service, NSA and my students in the Brown Executive Masters of Cybersecurity...more
1/10/2020
/ Assassinations ,
Critical Infrastructure Sectors ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Data Protection ,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ,
Foreign Relations ,
Hackers ,
Information Technology ,
Iran ,
Malware ,
NYDFS ,
Risk Management ,
Risk Mitigation ,
Vulnerability Assessments
It is being reported that LifeLabs, a Canadian lab company that is the largest provider of laboratory diagnostics and lab testing services in Canada, recently paid an undisclosed ransom to hackers who compromised its computer...more
12/23/2019
/ Biometric Information ,
Clinical Laboratories ,
Connected Cars ,
Connected Items ,
Criminal Conspiracy ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Electronic Medical Records ,
Extradition ,
Hackers ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
HIPAA Breach ,
Identity Theft ,
Information Technology ,
Malware ,
OCR ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
PHI ,
Ransomware ,
Settlement
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards activated the State’s cybersecurity team recently after several State offices’ computers started acting strangely. The IT team identified an intrusion of Ryuk ransomware and which programs...more
12/13/2019
/ Connected Items ,
Credit Cards ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Drones ,
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ,
Hackers ,
Information Technology ,
Municipalities ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
PHI ,
Ransomware ,
Smart Devices ,
State and Local Government ,
Vulnerability Assessments
Holiday shopping is in full gear and everything seems to be an Internet of Things (IoT) device. It continues to amaze me how folks will buy IoT gadgets and plop them in their homes and have no idea that they include a speaker...more
12/12/2019
/ Biometric Information ,
Children's Products ,
Children's Toys ,
Connected Items ,
Data Collection ,
Data Protection ,
FBI ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Hackers ,
Holiday Gifts ,
Information Technology ,
Internet of Things ,
Mobile Device Management ,
Mobile Devices ,
Risk Management ,
Smart Devices ,
Vulnerability Assessments
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards activated the State’s cybersecurity team recently after several State offices’ computers started acting strangely. The IT team identified an intrusion of Ryuk ransomware, what programs were...more
National Veterinary Associates (NVA), a large network of veterinary hospitals and clinics, has reportedlybeen the victim of a ransomware attack. According to the reports, NVA employs more than 2,600 veterinarians, with over...more
Security researchers Intezer and IBM X-Force have identified a new ransomware that is seriously vicious. It’s PureLocker—named because it is programmed in PureBasic language, which is apparently unusual....more
11/14/2019
/ Cryptocurrency ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cyber Crimes ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Hackers ,
IBM ,
Information Technology ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Phishing Scams ,
Ransomware ,
Vulnerability Assessments
Cyberliability insurance provider Beazley Insurance Company has analyzed its internal breach response data and determined that in its experience, there has been a thirty-seven percent (37%) increase in ransomware attacks this...more