In a world of automation, computers and the data on them have become the backbone of many organizations. But data is a double-edged sword. It can be leveraged by organizations to improve operations, but in the wrong hands, it can be a deadly weapon for hackers. So how do organizations ensure their data is safe?
U.S. President Joe Biden is under pressure to take a stand against a relentless pace of cybersecurity attacks. Russian-speaking hackers have claimed accountability for a recent ransomware assault on IT management software provider Kaseya VSA. The group of Russian threat actors also referred to as the Revil Group, launched a bombshell supply-chain hit during the weekend of July 4th, 2021 against Kaseya VSA and multiple managed service providers.
No discussion on ICS attacks could be complete without talking about what some would call, ‘the elephant in the room.’ Critical infrastructure has always been a target for warfare, and modern ICS are no exception. Several high-profile ICS disruptions have in fact been attributed to malicious hackers working at the behest of a military or intelligence agency.
The term DDoS attack refers to a malicious actor or group of actors intentionally trying to overwhelm a victim’s computer network with traffic. The large influx of network traffic being directed at the target can cause serious issues for legitimate traffic, such as regular users who need to access websites, data or services. Everyone from gamer sites to large enterprises fears the threat of distributed denial of service attacks.
Social engineering is a type of cyber attack that targets people to gain access to buildings, systems, or data. Social engineering attacks exploit human vulnerabilities to get inside a company’s IT system, for instance, and access its valuable information. Social engineering is one of the most common— and successful— forms of cyber attack. Social engineering attacks are constantly evolving, but they generally follow five main approaches.
2020 was the year of the DDoS attack. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks spiked over the last year, driven by the pandemic and the fact that so many people were locked down, working from home, and using online services to get through the pandemic. According to a report from NETSCOUT, more than 10 million DDoS attacks were launched last year, targeting many of the remote and essential services people were using to make it through the lockdown.
On 26 April 2020, 189 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America, and South America shut down schools marking one of the largest mass school closures in history. But today, more than a year since COVID-19 forced entire cohorts online, economies continue to flit in and out of lockdowns and schools are continuing to resort to remote or hybrid-learning arrangements.
Back in June, I wrote about the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) new security directive concerning pipeline owners and operators. The order mandated those entities to disclose security incidents such as the ransomware attack that affected the Colonial Pipeline Company back in May to the TSA and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
As operations at sports stadiums become more dependent on data centers and online networks, and as the performance metrics and health data of athletes become more vulnerable to illicit exposure or alteration, the $80 billion industry of competitive sports has become increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. As a business they are generating big money and big data, both of which are perfect for hackers.
