A third wave – feels more like a third tsunami. Many haven’t returned to the office; some may end up back in work-from-home scenarios. While workers may feel safe at home, false senses of complacency can easily mask very real cyber threats. Cybercriminals don’t pause for pandemics. With the increase in remote work, an explosion in cybercriminal activity, like phishing, has followed. Not only is phishing still prevalent, but it’s rising much like that third wave.

For most of this year, COVID-19 has dominated and disrupted our normal business routines, and as we relocated to avoid the first wave of the virus, the hackers and thieves weren’t far behind.  As people began working remotely in large numbers, the number of unsecured remote desktops soared, as did brute-force attacks against those desktops.

In its quarterly report, toy maker Mattel announced it was the victim of a ransomware attack on its information technology systems that caused data on a number of systems to be encrypted  in July 2020.

Japanese gaming giant Capcom has disclosed a data breach which led to unauthorized access of some files and systems. The developer claimed that the incident  impacted email and file servers, among other systems.

Blackbaud, cloud software provider, has been sued in 23 proposed consumer class action cases in the U.S. and Canada related to the ransomware attack and data breach that the company suffered in May 2020.

NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS) has signed an agreement with Google to explore the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for enhancing NOAA’s use of satellite and environmental data.

California voters have passed the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), expanding data protection for consumers. 

While the first thing that may come to mind is attacks on voter booths and polling data, hackers were expected to hit more vulnerable targets first, such as community-based organizations and systems supporting political campaigns. These networks are rarely designed to withstand the ransomware threats much larger, established political bodies face, and hackers know it. Here, we talk to Doug Matthews, Vice President of Product Management for Veritas, about the conditions impacting data protection during the election period.

Cybercriminals quickly weaved the pandemic into their email scams earlier this year, and more recently impersonated the IRS by pretending to share updates about COVID tax relief in an attempt to steal sensitive tax information. In mid-April, Google’s Threat Analysis Group reported that they detected 18 million COVID-19 themed malware and phishing emails per day. And that’s without including all the email impersonation, invoice fraud, and phishing attacks that have nothing to do with COVID, but are dangerous nonetheless. In this article, I will provide some tips to help individuals and organizations communicate more securely over email.