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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.
Cyber insurance premiums have jumped 73% in the U.S alone. Greater specificity over what is (and what is not) covered has become a feature of many updated policies, as has the expectation that companies need to have greater cybersecurity hygiene in place in order to qualify for insurance.
FlexBooker, a commonly used appointment scheduling and calendar service, is apologizing to its customers after 3.7 million records appeared on a dark web hacker forum following a DDoS attack.
Some of the changes COVID-19 engendered will outlast the pandemic itself. The primary source of cybersecurity risks have shifted as remote work arrangements means the weak link is the individual employee who may not have adopted all the urgently needed new security measures.
The Office of the Attorney General of New York has recorded 1.1 million compromised accounts. The stolen logins were put to use in credential stuffing attacks against a variety of "well-known" online retail, food and delivery businesses.
Synthetic identity fraud and identity fraud in general were the costliest kinds of fraud that U.S. ecommerce merchants suffered during 2021, as the incidence and total cost of online fraud continues to rise. Authorities and analysts report growth in the number of criminals targeting children and teenagers online.
Legal action may be forthcoming for organizations that do not patch Log4j. The FTC has issued an alert that references the Equifax breach (which ended in a settlement of $700 million) as a precedent.
Password Manager LastPass says no master password was compromised after multiple users received unauthorized login alerts. The company blamed credential stuffing and system errors.
By increasing security awareness, an organization can reduce its chance of having a cybersecurity incident by up to 70%. But, cybersecurity training can be cumbersome, meaning companies, and its employees, might not prioritize it, or at the very worst, not do it all.
Cyber attack on Norwegian media company Amedia halted the publication of printed newspapers and potentially compromised personal information of employees and subscribers.










