The number of cyberattacks has been increasing at an unprecedented rate. I wish this statement—which we’ve been making for years now—was no longer true. But the sad and cold reality is that cyberattacks continue to hit businesses of all sizes. Recent headlines showing the entire city of Atlanta hit by ransomware underscores the heightened threat matrix our businesses are currently confronting.
This Q1 of 2018 has increased to previously unimaginable rates—by nearly 80% in some areas of healthcare this year.
Two reason for increased attacks?
Attacks are more far-reaching today than ever. One of the easiest means for hackers to penetrate networks now is increasing their reach. Their malware is able to spread further and faster than ever before. With networks remaining unpatched and users still susceptible to even common phishing attacks, it’s easier for hackers to expand their targets than morph their attack types.
While many attackers are merely increasing the volume of attacks in expectation of hitting off more victims (by the rule of numbers), some very crafty hackers are increasing their sophistication to outthink IT departments, simultaneously targeting multiple attack vectors.
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The big attack gaining traction among cyber attackers that may strike your business is hard to detect.
It’s nothing new. Fileless malware has been around for quite some time, but its popularity is quickly growing among cyber criminals with targets on business networks.
Because it’s stealthy, efficient and very capable of evading many of the conventional security systems many businesses have in place (like antivirus and conventional firewalls), fileless malware is becoming the ‘go-to’ for attacks on enterprise-grade systems.
Today I want to spend a few minutes on why fileless malware has become so big in the cybercrime community and what you can do to protect yourself from becoming the next organization to fall to its devastating effects.
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Why you might want to make sure your credit is where you left it.
A recent consumer survey suggests that more than half of Americans still haven’t checked their credit report since the big Equifax breach late last year, which exposed Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and other personal data of nearly 150 million people.
The problem here is that a good swath of people affected by the breach are keeping their heads in the sand and aren’t even checking to see if they’ve been affected.
One of the most recent very visible results of the Equifax data breach has been in fraudulent tax filings.
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With ransom and phishing attacks on the rise in 2018, most businesses struck with an attack have no clue what to do to respond to an attack.
Now that we know that lightning strikes twice when it comes to ransom attacks (i.e., once attacked, your chances of a subsequent attack are very likely), it’s more important than ever to be prepared to completely remediate an infection and respond to an attack post-infection.
Since reinfections are becoming the norm rather than the exception, I want to take a few moments to cover how to make sure a cyberattack doesn’t happen again.
5 actions to not overlook after a cyberattack:
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How Poor Web Monitoring And Policies Lead To Wasted Costs And Increased Data Breaches.
Maybe you know someone in your office that is addicted to Buzzfeed (that addictive media site with all sorts of cool and crazy news) or maybe you know someone constantly on Facebook, looking at friend’s updates throughout the day.
Whatever the site, the fact of the matter is that your users are landing online and are most definitely exposed to questionable websites throughout their workday (that is, if you aren’t taking steps to make sure malicious or distracting and unproductive web content is not prevented).
With over 2 zettabytes of data online today (that’s equivalent to 2 TRILLION gigabytes!), there is a LOT of stuff on the network that will not only waste your user’s productivity, but will certainly risk your network from malicious ransom infection.
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Based on some recent studies out of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology comes alarming evidence that many of us are getting sick from our computers and other electronic devices.
One recent study specifically out of the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill found that bacteria are more than at home on your keyboards and phones, pressing for recommendations to regularly sanitize work spaces to prevent you and your coworkers from getting seriously ill.
The study evaluated several sorts of bacteria and the conclusions were simple: clean up your work space.
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