In Q2 and Q3 of this year, Kroll observed an increase in large-scale AiTM phishing and BEC attacks targeting organizations within the professional services, banking and financial industries. In 90% of Kroll's recent BEC investigations, MFA was in place at the time of unauthorized access, but attackers can obtain authentication tokens and/or session cookies to easily evade defenses.

The new rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on reporting mark a significant shift in the requirements for disclosing cyber breaches, leaving many businesses wondering how their cybersecurity practices will be impacted in the long run. These new rules create significant new disclosure obligations for public companies, requiring timely and detailed disclosures of material cybersecurity incidents and periodic disclosures about cybersecurity risk management and governance.

An effective detection and response capability is essential for monitoring key assets, containing threats early and eradicating them. However, due to the current disparate nature of potential attack vectors within an organization, affording the wide range of sensors necessary can be a challenge as well as the worry of the disruption of critical services. Yet, without robust detection and response processes, businesses are left vulnerable.

Kroll has observed an uptick in cases of DARKGATE malware being delivered through Microsoft Teams messages. These campaigns have mainly targeted organizations in the transportation and hospitality sectors. This activity has also been reported throughout open-source reporting, sharing a number of key indicators with Kroll observations, such as common filenames, adversary infrastructure and similar domain name conventions to host the initial download.