Category: Endpoint Security

Report Says 1.9 Billion Data Records Were Compromised During First-Half 2017 Breaches

11/20/2017

By Bogdan Botezatu on Nov 17, 2017 |

What were the biggest cyber security culprits in the first half of 2017 from a data breach standpoint? Identity theft and poor internal security practices, according to the latest Breach Level Index (BLI) Report by Gemalto.

The index, a global database of public data breaches, showed that the first six months of the year had 918 data breaches that led to 1.9 billion data records being compromised worldwide. Compared with the last six months of 2016, the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by a staggering 164%, the report said.

Much of this was due to the 22 largest data breaches, each involving more than one million compromised records. Of the 918 data breaches during the period, more than 500 (59% of all breaches) had an unknown or unaccounted number of compromised data records.

Firms that didn’t patch and enabled local admin rights continue to suffer post cyber-attack

7/17/2017

By Graham Cluley on Jul 12, 2017 |

Here’s a salutary reminder for all businesses.

Just because a malware outbreak has begun to fade away from the newspaper headlines, doesn’t mean your troubles are over. Many firms can continue to suffer long afterwards.

In late June, a malware attack crippled businesses and critical infrastructure in Ukraine at astonishing speed.

Initially suspected of being a similar ransomware attack to the WannaCry outbreak seen the month before, the malware (variously named as Petya, NotPetya or GoldenEye by security vendors) appears to have been launched through a malicious automatic update to a popular Ukrainian accounting software tool called MeDoc.

We tell companies all the time to keep their software updated with the latest available patches, and yet here was an update which actually delivered a devastating malware attack. The irony isn’t lost on anybody.

WannaCry wreaks havoc. How to keep your business safe

6/27/2017

By Razvan Muresan on May 16, 2017 |

Ransomware infections impact individual users and businesses, regardless of size or industry, by causing service disruptions, financial loss and, in some cases, permanent loss of valuable data. In 2016, the number of ransomware attacks increased 300 percent from 2015, with over 4,000 attacks detected per day, according to US government statistics. WannaCryptor (WannaCry), the most recent version of ransomware, has targeted businesses in more than 70 countries around the world, with more than 250,000 infected terminals so far.

By late Monday, cybersecurity officials said the globe-spanning WannaCry cyberattack had largely been contained, though governments and companies are likely to continue disclosing instances of infection for days or weeks as they get a better handle on the scope of the attack, the WSJ reports.

The FT reports that "at least a dozen other NSA tools are currently being discussed and worked on as the basis of potential new cyber weapons on hacking forums on the dark web."

22 years of Innovations

Report Says 1.9 Billion Data Records Were Compromised During First-Half 2017 Breaches

Firms that didn’t patch and enabled local admin rights continue to suffer post cyber-attack

WannaCry wreaks havoc. How to keep your business safe

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