Technology corporation IBM has announced a $5 million grant to schools to improve their readiness for cyber-attacks. The grants will go to schools in Ireland, the UAE, and several states in North America. It is predicted that there will be a significant increase in attacks on schools throughout the 2022/2023 academic year, with each attack costing on average $3.8 million for educational institutions. Charles Henderson, Global Managing Partner, said: “We're proud to be able to support schools through this initiative, now in its second year, by helping to address critical gaps in security resources and planning and preparedness.”
Executives from Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and other social media companies are due to appear before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. There, they’ll answer questions about social media's impact on security. A former employee of Twitter is due to report on data security failings and nation state agents within the company. Likewise, TikTok executives are due to address accusations that the social media platform is a high security risk to the western world – including the considerable personal data required to sign up. Many have suggested that social media should require more thorough checks to hold them to account for security breaches.
Two recent ransomware attacks against healthcare systems indicate that cybercriminals have not forgotten about the medical industry. As a high value target, gangs have repeatedly targeted hospitals, healthcare companies and national infrastructure. And this month, the Texas-based Oakbend Medical Centre shut down its entire IT system after an attack. A gang claimed responsibility, saying it had stolen over a million sensitive, personal data records. It then threatened to leak the data, along with staff information. Similarly, a Pennsylvania healthcare provider suffered a ransomware attack in the days following, announcing that 75,000 patient records were lost. It is not yet clear how much ransom the attackers are trying to extort.
Cybersecurity is now an important topic for executives. In fact, according to a new study by Rackspace Technology, cybersecurity is the biggest concern for corporate heads. The survey of business leaders showed a growing concern about cybersecurity – 59 per cent of respondents listed it as one of their three biggest business worries, ahead of IT talent shortages (49 per cent) and inflation (47 per cent). In the past, security teams and senior leadership were often at odds. Now, 75 per cent of those surveyed feel that cybersecurity teams are better positioned at the board level than they were five years ago. Just over half consider business leaders to be a supporter of cybersecurity teams. While it's good to know that leadership is serious about cyber security, many security challenges still lie ahead.
Conventionally, one of the most important things you can do to protect yourself from hackers is use multi-factor authentication (MFA). It’s an added step in traditional cybersecurity – helping to mitigate the damage from lost, phished, stolen or weak passwords. But recently there's been a surge in malicious software aimed at defeating MFA. For hackers who want to get around multifactor authentication, one option is to use an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) attack. This combines a phishing attack with a proxy server, allowing attackers to steal a user's password and authentication session cookie. A recent Microsoft report showed that over 10,000 organisations have already been a target.
NATO is assessing the impact of a data breach of classified military documents which are being sold by an unidentified hacker group. The data includes blueprints of weapons used by NATO allies in the Ukraine war. MBDA Missile Systems, a European missile manufacturer, admitted that its data was among the cache of stolen documents posted online – but claimed none of the classified files belonged to the firm. Cyber criminals have been selling 80GB of the stolen data for 15 Bitcoins and claim they have sold it to at least one buyer so far.
