30 Aug Cybercrime Bytes: Double Extortion Ransomware, Who’s Being Phished, Cyber Pandemic?
Weekly news that keeps you on the cutting edge of cybersecurity
– The editors at Cybercrime Magazine
Sausalito, Calif. – Aug. 31, 2020
This week’s rundown is sponsored by Absolute — New enterprise security trends, threats & opportunities revealed in 2020: The State of Endpoint Resilience™ Report, our annual study of 8.5 million devices.
— Cybercriminals are increasingly utilizing a tactic that is becoming known as double extortion, whereby they not only encrypt data and demand a ransom from the victim in order to regain access but also threaten to upload it online if their terms are not met. TechTarget | Computer Weekly
— A new video sponsored by security awareness training company KnowBe4 — “What your employees (don’t) know about spear phishing” — reveals how little our workforce knows about one of the most dangerous cyber threats which targets individuals at organizations of all sizes and types globally. Cybercrime Magazine
— Senator Angus King of Maine says that the U.S. is at risk of a catastrophic cyberattack that can rival the COVID-19 pandemic. King is co-chair of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC), which was established to develop a consensus on a strategic approach to defending the U.S. against cyberattacks of significant consequences. Cybercrime Radio
— Toronto is emerging as one of the leading innovators in cybersecurity. Canada is expected to be in a deficit of at least 8,000 workers in our industry by 2022, and most of the jobs are focused in Toronto where the average salary of a cybersecurity professional is around $85,000. IFSEC Global
— According to research group Cybersecurity Ventures, cybercrime will cost the global economy $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015. In an age of ongoing digital transformation, cybercrime has quickly become today’s fastest-growing form of criminal activity, ranging from ransomware and data leaks to commercial espionage. AMEinfo
Cybercrime Radio: Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
Billionaire philanthropist on cybercrime and election security
— Cybersecurity and technological advancement go hand in hand as the world moves all of its most valuable information, data, and more into the digital realm. The coronavirus remote-work and school push has spurred the technological transformation even further. This helped send CrowdStrike’s stock to new highs last week. Yahoo Finance!
— Ransomware damage costs will hit $20 billion annually next year, with an attack on a business occurring every 11 seconds, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. ”How to Mitigate the Risk of Ransomware Attacks,” a webinar on Sep. 15, 2020, will feature a forward looking conversation by two cybersecurity experts on this critical issue. Keeper Security
— COVID-19 has revealed some critical mistruths in a lot of popular narratives about cybersecurity. One of the biggest is that spending more money on fancy new tools automatically means that your security will improve. If that were true, then as cybersecurity budgets increase we’d see a corresponding decrease in the cost of cybercrime. Morphisec
— Cyber threats have been rising by 14 percent every year, and they’re becoming harder to detect. On average it takes 203 days to detect a security breach and 73 days to remediate it, according to Robert Johnson, III, founder and CEO at Cimcor, a cybersecurity company which has been named the Northwest Indiana Business & Industry Hall of Fame Enterprise of the Year for 2020. NWI Times
— Cybersecurity is more important than ever as cybercrime has increased by 67 percent over the past 5 years, according to Trailhead, who offers free learning for companies and individuals of all levels to develop security knowledge. Just ransomware alone is climbing 3.5X annually. Salesforce
Cybercrime TV: The Past, Present, and Future of Penetration Testing
Interview with Seemant Sehgal, CEO at BreachLock
— Companies and organizations around the world have a growing need for well-trained, qualified cybersecurity professionals. In response to that demand, Penn State Shenango will launch a new major in cybersecurity analytics and operations, which will join Shenango’s offerings starting in fall 2021. Penn State University
— StackSkills is offering lifetime access to 1000+ premium online training courses for just $59. The 5 top skills covered are: Ethical hacking and penetration testing; Coding and computer programming; Cloud computing; Machine learning and artificial intelligence; and Cybersecurity. The Hacker News
— Virtual Security Operations Day 2020, which is being held on Sep. 20, covers the challenges that SecOps teams are facing today — including how to build up an intelligent SOC, what a next-gen SOC looks like, how to improve security analyst efficiency through automation, and more. Micro Focus
— The two biggest cyberthreats are currently phishing attacks and compromised emails. These attacks are incredibly common. One survey found that 88 percent of organizations experienced a phishing attack last year, while 86 percent dealt with an email compromise attack. Business Because
— Spark Mindset, Inc. recently announced its CyberSpace Virtual Academy Program, an online education service that prepares 6th–12th grade students for a career in cybersecurity starting Sep. 14, 2020. For every child registered, a portion of the tuition goes towards a minority from a school in an underserved community. Cybercrime Magazine
More next week.
– From the editors at Cybercrime Magazine
Sponsored by Absolute
Absolute adds resilience to your endpoint.
We help organizations recover and resume normal operations in the face of security breaches.
Absolute envisions a world where security and IT professionals always retain control over their devices and data. We’re the first and only company to offer uncompromised visibility and near real-time remediation of security breaches at the source.
Absolute Persistence™ returns devices to their desired state of safety and efficacy after malicious attacks or user error, thanks to our unique location in the firmware of more than 500 million devices built by most of the world’s top device manufacturers.
