Ahead of 2 December’s cyber crime and ransomware awareness session in London, iFORCE’s Ben Harris tells us a bit about his early career, which gave him a valuable education in effectively fighting modern cyber crime. We also learn about his ‘whole force’ approach and his number one tip for anybody who feels less than prepared […]
NEWS
Three steps to hell – ransomware’s ‘triple extortion’ threat
Insurer Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) recently described ransomware as a “pandemic” that is spreading rapidly around the world that is being driven by three factors the emergence of ready-made and very affordable (as little as US$40 a month) ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), offered by groups such as REvil and Darkside – it even comes with support! […]
Tesco hackers attempt supermarket sweep
After an incident that began on Friday and into Saturday, when a Tesco spokesperson confirmed that hackers attempted to “to interfere with our systems”, things appear to have returned to normal at the retail giant. During the outage shoppers were unable to order goods or track deliveries. A queuing system is now in place as […]
Too few ransomware victims have adequate backup in place when hit
Perhaps the most surprising statistics to come out of a new CISOs Connect report, Ransomware In Focus, available here, are that only about 60% of respondents felt they had good data backup and recovery technology, while around a quarter had something in place but wanted to upgrade to something better, and just under 16% had […]
The details of this law enforcement hack are quite consequential
Why, four days ago, did the REvil ransomware gang’s leak site the “Happy Blog” go offline? It looks like FBI, working with Cyber Command, the Secret Service and agencies from several other countries, successfully used one of ransomware gangs’ own favourite tactics, compromised backups, against them. Following much publicised attacks on critical infrastructure, including REVil’s […]
Security begins at home: protecting your remote workforce from cybercrime
While the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging, workers obliged to log in from home have become increasingly vulnerable to hacks as criminals look to exploit the attack surface that more remote working has created. In a report published in April, security software firm Sophos found that 37% of organisations were hit by ransomware in 2021 […]