If you’ve read a newspaper or watched the news in the past few weeks, you’ll notice one common topic that all the major news outlets are discussing… COVID-19. Right now, many companies are trying to provide employee guidance during this worldwide pandemic, as governments ask those who can to work from home in an effort to slow the spread.
When we read about hackers, we either think of people in Anonymous wearing Guy Fawkes masks or else that film from the mid-’90s were roller blade rolling teens bring down the baddies with elaborate rabbits and trojan horses. While complicated CIA type hacking may exist the VAST majority of hacking is simply someone getting your password and logging in online just like you would The VAST majority of hacking is simply someone getting your password and logging in online just you would
The healthcare industry possesses the crown jewels that the bulk of attackers are after: Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Data has become the new currency in the digital underground, consisting primarily of social security numbers, credit card information, health information, and passwords.
As if there wasn’t enough to worry about these days, cyber attacks have taken a sharp uptick since the COVID-19 pandemic began this year. From January to March, AT&T Alien Labs Open Threat Exchange (OTX) saw 419,643 indicators of compromise (IOC) related to COVID-19, including a 2,000% month-over-month increase from February to March. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the shift to remote working, increasing their volume of attacks by nearly 40% in the last month.
From global pioneers to budding startups, almost every organization around the globe has adopted a mandatory work-from-home routine due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This shift has brought up numerous questions for decision-makers: How are we going to pull this off? Is work-from-home strategy feasible? Is our network security going to be compromised? Is BYOD the solution?
Malicious actors continue to abuse coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as a lure to profit off of innocent people. Indeed, Arkose Labs found that 26.5% of all transactions recorded in Q1 2020 were fraud and abuse attempts—a 20% increase over the previous quarter and the highest attack rate ever observed by the security firm’s researchers. It’s therefore unsurprising that we’ve seen the U.S.
As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, not only disrupting health and life but also business continuity up and down the supply chain, economic and cyber risk have taken on pandemic proportions, as well. Many enterprises are struggling just to keep essential services functioning as they send employees home to work with new, hastily procured technologies. At the same time, they’re battling a surge in cybercrime by threat actors seeking to take advantage of the chaos.
Security researchers observed that digital attackers are increasingly incorporating the reCaptcha API into their phishing campaigns. Barracuda Networks explained that malicious actors are starting to outfit their phishing attempts with reCaptcha walls so that they can shield their landing pages from automated URL analysis tools as well as add a sense of legitimacy to their operations. Some of these efforts have consisted of deploying a fake checkbox and form.
In a world full of threats targeting data as well as stringent compliance mandates, it’s never been more important to create a strong unified cloud security strategy. But as cloud environments become more complex and diverse, it’s also never been more difficult. Even if you’re partnering with a notably secure provider, it’s still important to understand your security responsibility and to be proactive about protecting your data in the cloud.
