Twenty years is a long time in cyber security. From mild inconveniences to nationwide attacks, hackers have developed their methods to procure more and more sensitive information. In the early 2000s, malware ruled the roost. 2008 was one of the biggest developments as the Zeus Trojan took aim at bank details, before attacking large corporations some five years later. Today, we’re seeing some of the biggest data breaches in history such as Collection 1, while smart technology is vulnerable to hacking. We know now that perimeter defence and multi-factor authentication are imperative to stay safe.

The Labour Party has suffered its second cyber-attack in two days, dealing a crushing blow to the party in the lead-up to December’s General Election. The attacks took place on Monday 11^th and Tuesday 12^th November. On both occasions, they were distributed denial of service attacks, in which botnets flooded servers with overwhelming traffic levels. As yet the attacker remains unidentified, but the attacks have been reported to the National Cybersecurity Centre.

The country of Russia has been forced to deny reports that state hackers broke into the Iranian Security Service’s hacking tools to launch worldwide attacks. It was speculated that Russian threat group Turla were behind the hijacked tools, but a spokesman for Russia said the claims were “an attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran”. The original reports were uncovered by US and UK intelligence agencies, suggesting the Russians piggybacked on an Iranian hacking group to target others.

Facebook has admitted that some users’ privacy may have been compromised as a ‘glitch’ was seen to activate cameras on iPhones as users scrolled through their feeds. The Facebook team claimed the bug was “inadvertently introduced” and have since released an update to prevent this from happening. The bug was first brought to Facebook’s attention when Twitter users reported their camera operating while viewing Facebook videos.  

New findings from the latest Cybersecurity Workforce Study have suggested that organisations are struggling to find cybersecurity talent. There are currently 2.8 million cybersecurity professionals in the world, but with the increasing threat of attacks, the report says we need to employ more than 4 million to keep up. Fortune 500 companies, SMEs and even government agencies were all said to be under threat.

Despite the lack of talent, studies show that those working in cybersecurity are content in their roles. This is good news for employers, with job sites such as Indeed reporting a 15% increase in cybersecurity postings. In addition, the average industry salary has now risen by 3.2% in the UK, compared to an average rise of 1.9% for all other jobs. Experts cite companies’ digital transformation as the main reason for the spike in job opportunities.