Malicious actors are increasingly leveraging COVID-19 as a theme for new digital fraud attacks. In February 2020, for instance, Action Fraud received 21 reports of fraud relating to the coronavirus. This number of reports more than doubled to 46 between March 1 and March 13, 2020. Between March 14 and March 18, 2020, the United Kingdom’s national fraud reporting center collected 38 reports alone. Those 105 reports represented a collective total of £970,000 in losses.

March 2020, the Coronavirus is pretty much everywhere. As I am writing these lines, the number of cases worldwide is 341,334 and 192 different countries have experienced infections.The world is fighting this epidemic and travel limitations are widely used in order to control the spread of the disease. While some say these restrictions are critical, others claim it to be ineffective and redundant. I am not an epidemiologist and will leave that analysis to the experts.

If you have been keeping up with the recent advancements in the cyber realm, you must have heard of cryptography. From popular films to ancient times, cryptography has always been discussed but gained much more significance in the recent years. Read our article and learn why! You must have done online shopping or created an account on a web platform before. While you are completing these tasks, you share sensitive and very valuable information.

In 2019 multiple cities, hospitals and educational institutions in the U.S. were crippled by ransomware, including Baltimore, Atlanta, New York City, Regis University in Denver and Monroe University in New York. In the the last 12 months, the infosec community has seen these ransomware operators seriously upping their game (see Ryuk ransomware).

The old adage warns “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The saying becomes even more pointed for threats that, unfortunately, do not yet have a cure. But the lessons of risk management offer a path forward, where prevention takes the form of avoiding, mitigating or reducing risks. As people and organizations confront COVID-19, the novel threat has inspired an array of new strategies to combat the pandemic.

In a previous post, I shared some expert insight into how organizations can address the challenges of hiring skilled talent despite the ongoing infosec skills gap. Organizations can’t rest easy once they’ve brought on new talent, however. They need to make sure they hold onto their existing workforce. That’s easier said than done. Cybersecurity Ventures forecasted that a total of 3.5 million infosec-positions will be unfilled in 2021.

A selection of this week’s more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news. For a daily selection see our twitter feed at #ionCube24. As many of us resort to working from home, the collaboration services we normally rely on are beginning to suffer. MS Teams, as well as Facebook and WhatsApp are experiencing unusual load. But apart from a the odd glitch things seem to be hanging on for now.