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Over the weekend AXA, an insurance giant based in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, reported falling victim to a ransomware attack. The attack is claimed to have been perpetrated by the Avaddon ransomware group, which has said it stole 3 TB of sensitive data from AXA's Asian operations. The attack was not limited to ransomware, as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) was also observed, taking AXA's global websites down for part of...

A CISOs workday is riddled with high-stress situations as they constantly battle the deluge of threats emerging from the ever-expanding threat landscape. Therefore it is no wonder that the majority of technology leaders are feeling stressed.    In recent years the challenges that CISOs face have only intensified. Since the pandemic, security professionals have had to carry out a mass overhaul of their companies systems and infrastructure in order to facilitate a work-from-anywhere environment. When...

The skills gap in cybersecurity is a much-discussed problem in the industry. Diversity is another issue that employers and educational institutions are trying to tackle, but changes are somewhat slow to come. And as the economy moves further into the digital age, it was clear to see people need help changing their career. These were the premises that brought Lorna and Andrea, the co-founders of CAPSLOCK and both former university lecturers, to assemble a world-class...

Following a ransomware attack on the administrative services company, CaptureRx, at least three US healthcare providers suffered a data breach. The attach occurred on February 6, and an investigation was launched almost two weeks later, discovering that several files had been accessed by an unauthorised user. The personal health information (PHI) of more than 24,000 individuals was exfiltrated. Under the providers affected were Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare, Thrifty Drug Stores and Gifford Health Care. The...

Despite the increased use of mobile device management (MDM), mobile phishing among financial services was at an all-time high last year. A report conducted by endpoint security expert, Lookout, revealed a 125% increase in exposure to considerable risk in both financial services and insurance organisations. The financial report also uncovered that the risk exposure to malware and risky applications increased by over 400%, leaving employees and customers in this industry vulnerable to a breach. Phishing...

The recent cyber-attack against Oldsmar Water Plant in Florida has increased concerns over cybercriminals targeting industrial organisations and highlighted that the cyber-physical attacks that have been predicted for years, are now happening. In February this year, it was announced that cybercriminals had broken into the water plant and changed the level of sodium hydroxide being fed to people’s homes from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million. It took over five hours for an...

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has released a set of security principles for local authorities to help protect smart city technology from cyber threats. Along with the guidance, it is warning that compromise of a single system in a smart city could have a negative impact across the network if badly designed, this includes internet of things (IoT) devices and underlying infrastructure. The NCSC document, dubbed 'Connected Places Cyber Security Principles', is aaims to...

Passwords essentially are the gateways to our digital lives. From business accounts, social media, shopping, banking – you name it – if they’re compromised, it can have big implications. To mark the day, we’ve compiled the advice of some of the world’s leading experts in cybersecurity to help keep individuals and, ultimately, businesses safer on their way to solving password creation and management.   Curtis Simpson, CISO, Armis: Most importantly, protect your credentials through the...

On Tuesday the internet service provider Belnet fell victim to a cyberattack. The attack took place at 11:00am CEST when the company experienced a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. This resulted in Belnet's servers being overloaded and preventing any availability of their online services. The attack affected any website with .be domains. As a number of Belgium's government agencies are customers of Belnet, they too were affected by the attack. The incident affected Belgium's...

Researchers from Qualys released a study that found 21 unique vulnerabilities in the Exim mail server. Some of these can be linked together to obtain full remote unauthenticated code execution and gain root privileges. In a blog post, the Qualys Research Team said that the vulnerabilities potentially affect numerous organisations due to an estimated 60% of internet servers that run on Exim. Researchers also executed a Shodan search to find that nearly 4 million Exim...