New Zealand’s Stock Exchange was crippled by a DDoS cyber attack, lasting four days and forcing the government to activate the National Security System requiring government agencies to work together.
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.
North Korean hackers are running cyber attacks that focus on fraudulent cash-outs at ATM machines by hacking payment systems, augmenting with use of social engineering elements.
Digital identity verification connected to a government-issued identity document can help organizations confirm who users claim to be and regulate age-restricted content accordingly.
While only 14,500 accounts were compromised in the relatively small credential stuffing attack that successfully hit the Canadian government, highly sensitive financial and personal information were exposed.
New vishing trend is thought to be responsible for the successful breaches of Twitter and several other high-profile targets in recent months.
Google fixed the Gmail bug that allowed email spoofing, a few hours after a disgruntled researcher published the exploit code. Google had delayed solving the issue by 137 days.
Ritz data breach allowed cybercriminals to steal credit card information from guests to make expensive purchases at Argos. The hackers impersonated staff and bank officials.
Social Data, a data broker that appears to have been scraping social media sites for information, has exposed 235 million personal profiles in a data leak.
A suspected fraudster accessed credit data of 24 million South Africans and 800,000 businesses in a massive Experian data breach.
RF-enabled devices are now prevalent in the enterprise and RF security is getting harder to enforce in secure facilities that require more nuanced electronic device policies.










