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.”

A new examination of the top 10 fastest-growing cybersecurity skills shows employers are ready to pay more for workers who can prevent attacks before they occur by building a secure digital ecosystem from the ground up, according to data from Burning Glass Technologies.

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.

The U.S. Presidential Election has, in many ways, been digital. Spend on digital ads in the race reached $2.9 billion in 2020. This was up sharply from $0.4 billion four years ago, marking the continuing prominence of digital political campaigning since President Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe heralded the channel as a deciding factor in the election 12 years ago. However, an increasing challenge for this online ad spend has been ad fraud. In a new study, in association with the University of Baltimore, we see that marketers will $35 billion to digital ad fraud in 2020. Ad fraud is the practice of fraudulently representing online advertising impressions, clicks, conversion or data events in order to generate revenue. In the case of the political campaigns, often money is spent reaching bots rather than voters.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Center for Partnerships & Innovation announced the release of the Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise Guide and Public Utility Commission Participation in GridEx V: A Case Study. These new publications highlight the need for public utility commissions and utilities to coordinate on cybersecurity preparedness efforts.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.  

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.

SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers unveiled third-quarter threat intelligence collected by the company’s more than 1 million global security sensors. Year-to-date findings through September 2020 highlight cyber criminals’ growing use of ransomware, encrypted threats and attacks leveraging non-standard ports, while overall malware volume declined for the third consecutive quarter.