Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
New dictionary words have been formed to describe online scams. Phishing, one that everyone knows by now, is when a scammer uses a pretext in an email to get someone to click on a link or attachment in the email to deploy malicious malware and ransomware.
Social engineering is when criminals conduct online search of…
Coveware issued its Q1 2021 Ransomware Report on April 26, 2021, which concludes that “[D]ata exfiltration extortion continues to be prevalent and we have reached an inflection point where the vast majority of ransomware attacks now include the theft of corporate data.”
The Report states that the average ransom payment increased 43 percent from $154,108…
State and local governments have been hammered with business email compromise (BEC) attacks over the past few years and the onslaught does not appear to be abating.
Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a Private Industry Notification to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments that they are being targeted by BEC attackers.…
The California State Controller’s Office (SCO) was recently a victim of phishing. According to its website, an employee of the SCO’s Unclaimed Property Division clicked on a link in an email, entered their user ID and password, and unknowingly provided a hacker with access to the email account. According to the website, “SCO has…
The statistic that cybercriminals have been unleashing 18 million phishing emails laced with malware on a daily basis into cyberspace during the pandemic is mind boggling, and one that executives should pay attention to when prioritizing resources for user education. Math was never my strongest subject, but 18 million malicious emails targeted at all of…
Those of us who are not health care workers, essential workers or the highest-priority cohort in our state to receive the COVID-19 vaccine are patiently awaiting our turn. We are anxious to receive the vaccine for our personal safety and health, while monitoring complaints about vaccine rollouts in different states.
As we have reported before,…
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts is warning small businesses that received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of a dramatic increase in reports of business email-compromise schemes related to the program. Scammers are using information about PPP recipients posted by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to impersonate PPP lenders requesting…
2020 will go down as one of the most stressful in my career as a cybersecurity professional. I have been working in this area of law full time since 2003. So that says a lot.
On top of the stress of the spread of the coronavirus, this has been a particularly stressful year assisting clients…
Although it is logical that cyber-attacks have risen during the pandemic, and there is anecdotal evidence that it is occurring, including our own experience, an interesting new report was recently released by Allianz, which provides cyber-liability insurance products.
According to the report, “While the COVID-19 outbreak cannot be said to be a direct cause of…
We spend a lot of time reporting on ransomware because we are seeing more incidents than ever before, and our readers comment that keeping them up to date on ransomware tactics is helpful. The ransomware gangs, strains and vectors are constantly changing, so it is very challenging for companies to keep up with their latest…
