As biometrics technology becomes more widespread and sophisticated, there is growing concern about it crossing ethical lines through misuse or fraud.
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.
The US has called out Russia for enabling ransomware attacks on the country’s healthcare organizations, jeopardizing lives and threatening international peace and security.
U.S. oil giant Halliburton says the August 2024 ransomware data breach cost the company $35 million due to the disruption of operations affecting the company's clients.
Data security and cybersecurity are often conflated but require distinct approaches. Traditional cybersecurity, focused on access control and encryption, overlooks the complexities of data consumption.
A February data breach involving 122 million records of marketing data has been confirmed to have come from B2B data broker DemandScience.
More than 32,000 new Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) have been recorded so far this year alone, and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the US government repository for reported vulnerabilities, now faces an unprecedented backlog of CVEs.
Hot Topic has suffered a data breach affecting 57 million retail customers stemming from a compromised cloud account without multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Amazon has confirmed that it was impacted by the MOVEit third party breach that took place in 2023, and that a large amount of employee data was included with a massive trove that was offered for sale on a hacking forum.
Identity security needs to be like salt. A good identity management solution is always there, always working, and always streamlining access without sacrificing security.
Google Cloud will enforce mandatory MFA by the end of 2025 due to the sensitive nature of cloud deployments and phishing and stolen credentials being top attack vectors.