Growing number of Americans now feel that state and local governments should increase their cybersecurity spending and do more to protect data from cyberattacks, similar to that which crippled the city of Atlanta in March 2018.
Cyber Security
Cyber criminals, state-sponsored hackers and even the occasional disgruntled employee are constantly looking to gain unauthorized access for a variety of purposes: theft of money, cyber espionage, personal information for sale or for use in scams, and damage to critical infrastructure for just a few of the most common.
So how does an organization mitigate an entire world full of continual cyber attacks? Just as buildings have a number of necessary elements of physical security: access control, cameras, alarms and so on; there are similar key elements of cyber security that are absolutely vital for just about any modern business.
It starts with identifying and closing the most common doors that attackers use. For example, phishing attacks on employees are far and away the most common initial point of entry. The breach of even a low-level employee account can quickly turn into an escalation in access privileges and the ability to reach sensitive information. This is also true of smart devices, which are generally more poorly secured than computers and phones.
As API usage continues to rise, the resulting API sprawl makes it nearly impossible to stay up to date on new and changed APIs, as well as where APIs could be exposing sensitive data. API threats are a critical point of vulnerability and API security is essential to the strategic survival of a business.
The term protestware recently made global news when organizations in Russia and Belarus were attacked by malicious code that wiped their computers’ files. This malware was distributed through the popular open source JavaScript library, node-ipc, and was introduced by its maintainer in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russian hackers affiliated with the Killnet group executed a DDoS cyber attack that rendered 20 Japanese government websites inaccessible, including a tax and an e-Government portal.
The Biden administration is examining the possible national security risks of having thousands of Chinese smart cars on US roadways. One possibility is that all of these cars could be remotely disabled at once, but there are also data privacy concerns.
Since June, some ransomware gangs have begun incorporating search functions into their data leak sites, making stolen data more accessible to put added pressure on victims.
People of an entire country were put at risk with Ecuador data breach of 20 million user information. The breach has accelerated a data privacy law that has been under consideration for months.
The latest Gone Phishin' event, finds that about 20% of the subjects were compromised by a simulated phishing email; almost 15% did not recognize a malicious download site. Larger organizations, or those that would be expected to have more robust security training programs, tended to fare the worst.
French news agency AFP has suffered a cyber attack affecting its content delivery systems, hot on the heels of a sustained Russian onslaught on the country's critical infrastructure.
While the digital advertising industry revenue grew a record 35.4% in 2021 and is on pace for another banner year in 2022, it’s also under intense regulatory and consumer scrutiny and increased demands for improved data privacy standards.









