This blog was written by an independent guest blogger. Businesses that allow employees to work from home are more likely to encounter a new security threat — compromised smart home devices. Smart technology connected to an employee’s home network, like smart thermostats, appliances, and wearables, can all fall victim to hackers. Workers that join their employer’s network remotely can unwittingly allow compromised devices to open the doors to hackers.
In April 2022 alone, there were 14.3m records breached due to 80 significant security incidents. These incidents make up a complex, shifting landscape of cyberattacks that require increasingly sophisticated defenses. While many of our methods are becoming more complex, some of our mechanisms are timeless, like the security whitelist. Also called an “allow list,” the security whitelist defines the permitted actions and blocks everything else.
Cybercriminals choose their targets based on two conditions - maximum impact and maximum profit. Financial institutions perfectly meet these conditions because they store highly valuable data, and their digital transformation efforts are creating greater opportunities for cyber attackers to access that data. This is why the financial sector is disproportionately targeted by cybercriminals, behind healthcare.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently released a Flash Report regarding BlackCat Ransomware breaches. This ransomware as a service (RaaS) has compromised at least 60 entities worldwide and is the first ransomware group to do so successfully using RUST, considered to be a more secure programming language that offers improved performance and reliable concurrent processing.
Everyone is at risk of a data breach or cyber attack, no matter how small or large a company is. Hackers and cybercriminals come up with new ways every day to steal sensitive information or personal data that they can potentially sell or ransom for money. According to a report published by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a record number of 1862 data breaches occurred in 2021 in the US.
