A water treatment facility in the City of Arkansas, Kansas, has suffered a suspected ransomware cyber attack, highlighting the persistent threat facing U.S. water systems.
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.
Over 100 million Americans have their sensitive personal information exposed in a massive data leak affecting the background check services company MC2 Data.
As the automotive industry continues to become more data-driven, a delicate balance must be struck between ongoing rollout of new or enhanced services and comprehensive security for data across the automobile, its operators and the interdependent layers of companies who work closely together to build today’s and tomorrow’s vehicles.
T-Mobile has seemingly had annual data breaches since 2018, but the new FCC settlement addresses just those that took place in the post-Covid period (and that involved the largest total count of customer records).
Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice have seized over 100 domains used by Kremlin-backed Russian hackers Star Blizzard for cyber espionage against the West.
The CRI guidance does not really focus on whether or not to make ransomware payments, instead stressing that victims should make early contact with law enforcement (regardless of their ultimate decision) and that they have many options to explore.
Chinese hackers may have had illicit access to a federal surveillance system for months before being discovered and rousted. The access was apparently gained by compromising US telecoms Verizon and AT&T.
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.
Numbers drawn from Allianz internal customer data show a 17% increase in the value of cyber claims and a 14% increase in frequency during this period. The central driver is class action lawsuits connected to data and privacy breaches.
A new research report from ESET finds that the "GoldenJackal" advanced persistent threat group has the capability to compromise air-gapped systems, and has been deploying it in Europe since at least 2022.










