As we head into the final day before the 2020 election, disinformation on social media continues to make headlines as a means to sway public opinion and to discourage people from voting. For example, swing states have been targeted with evolving disinformation tactics in an attempt to influence what happens in the voting booth, while Black and Latino voters have been flooded with messages aimed to depress turnout by fueling cynicism and distrust in the political process.
Cybercriminals are taking notice of the seemingly endless vulnerabilities schools face. Take the explosive ransomware attack on the University of Utah from earlier this summer, or the malware attack on the Rialto school district in California, for example. Even with a rapidly increasing attack surface, schools aren’t exactly able to drain their already-limited funding on transforming their IT infrastructure in the midst of a global pandemic. However, it is possible for schools to reduce risk by understanding where they are most vulnerable, taking the time to educate teachers, parents and students, and adopting certain tools and strategies to prevent targeted attacks on remote learning networks.
It’s the season of ghouls, ghosts and outrageous costumes. But for CISOs and cybersecurity professionals, a bump in the night on Halloween is more likely to be a notification warning them of data breach than a spooky ghostly visitation. In the COVID-19 era, spookiness-as-a-service providers who rent out costumes or sell party products are likely to have a difficult time as lockdowns and home-working play havoc with businesses focused on in-person interaction. Yet for hackers, the dawn of a socially-distanced new normal has opened up vast numbers of attack vectors and given them new opportunities to target businesses or individuals. So what should you be worried about this Halloween? To help you work out the answer to that question, here are some of the scariest cybersecurity stories and trends of 2020:
Rigorous training as to how hackers are able to get into systems and access sensitive data and how to defend against an onslaught of cyberattacks has given rise to a specific type of training and competition for cybersecurity professionals: Capture the Flag (CTF).
To find out more about these competitions, we talk to Dr. David Brumley, CEO of ForAllSecure, Inc. and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Healthcare providers remain firmly focused on dealing with the global pandemic, juggling the often-conflicting demands of providing care while keeping patients and staff safe. The financial impact of the pandemic has left many providers on the brink of bankruptcy amid falling patient visits deferred elective surgeries, and insufficient government aid to “fill the gap.”
It’s easy to see how network tool sprawl gets started. The needs and challenges facing security and networking groups are immense. Network speeds have steadily increased, and there are always new demands and uses. Network conditions and requirements change weekly, if not daily. Security threats increase in number and approach. At the same time, technological advancement rapidly brings new solutions to the market that are beneficial in addressing networking and security needs.
While breaches are an inevitable part of doing business, you can limit the negative impact by developing a solid playbook that charts a course to recovery. Examine potential threats, work out how to handle discrete scenarios, and spell it all out for your employees. By compiling policies and work streams, assigning responsibilities, and setting expectations you can build real resilience.
Cool heads prevail in a crisis, and nothing curbs the spread of panic as well as a clearly delineated plan. But it’s not enough to craft a playbook, you also need to test it before it can serve as a critical piece of governance for your organization. Let’s take a closer look at the best way to go about developing a playbook.
In this ongoing virtual environment, organizations remain highly vulnerable to the significant cybersecurity risks exposed by widespread remote work - business email compromise (BEC), in particular. How did business email compromise become such a serious threat for organizations, and why should cyber insurance be top of mind right now, as a result? Let’s dive in.
With the healthcare industry expected to spend $125 billion on cybersecurity from 2020 to 2025, dollars must be spent for maximum efficiency. The question is, how to allocate those funds most effectively at a time when cybercriminals have placed a huge target on hospitals, research labs, pharmaceuticals and insurance carriers.
Organizations need to take a layered approach to security to protect their organizations and sensitive patient data. The smartest approach is to start at the perimeter and work back toward existing enterprise protections – here’s how to do that.
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