Personally Identifiable Information (PII) encompasses data that uniquely identifies an individual. Examples of PII include direct identifiers like full names, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and indirect identifiers such as date of birth, email and IP addresses. The precise nature of PII can vary depending on the context and jurisdiction, but its defining characteristic is its ability to single out a specific person.

Earlier today, CrowdStrike released a new update on their Falcon Sensor product. Unfortunately, the update caused technical issues, resulting in major outages globally to Microsoft Windows machines. The issue caused the “Blue Screen of Death” and several reports worldwide stated that several industries were affected, such as airlines, banks, media, etc. According to CrowdStrike Tech Alert, they are already aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the CrowdStrike Sensors.

The intersection of identity, endpoint, and network security is becoming increasingly self-evident. Despite all their efforts, modern organizations continue to struggle to safeguard their data and prevent unauthorized access. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations report for 2024 continues to highlight that human elements were a component of 68% of breaches.

It’s time to ‘Have Your Say’ on the future of cybersecurity regulations in the European Union. The draft implementing regulation for the NIS2 Directive is now open for public feedback through the ‘Have Your Say’ portal until July 25, 2024. This consultation period allows stakeholders to contribute to refining the regulation, with all feedback shaping the final regulations.

New data puts the spotlight on the frequency and impact of modern ransomware attacks, highlighting the overconfidence organizations are showing in their ability to defend and respond to attacks. If you’re like one of the organizations surveyed in Halcyon’s latest Ransomware CISO Survey report, the findings were quite eye opening.

Over the years, door-to-door scams have become rampant, targeting unsuspicious homeowners with various tactics. The door-to-door scam involves individuals disguising themselves as sales representatives or service providers to access people's homes to gain personally identifiable information like social security numbers, properties, or money. There are various door-to-door scams, and understanding how they work is crucial to protecting oneself and the community.

Trustwave SpiderLabs issued a warning that threat actors may attempt to take advantage of CrowdStrike’s software update that caused widespread outages by using the news as the center of a social engineering scheme to convince people to open malicious phishing emails or fall for other types of attacks. Using this news cycle is nothing new.

Today’s global IT outage affecting Microsoft Windows users was caused by a bug in a CrowdStrike product (Falcon Strike) protection content update. The resulting widespread impact demonstrates an urgent importance for maintaining strong quality assurance (QA) processes before products or their updates are released into production.

Last year, 95% of organizations faced some kind of data outage or disruption. The impact of these incidents was overwhelming, with an average cost of $1.7 million per incident. This statistic shows how important it is for organizations to have a data safety plan. Organizations need robust measures to ensure data resiliency and effective disaster recovery. One such solution is cloud-to-cloud restore. Backup is the key to recovering and restoring your data in such scenarios.