As I had mentioned previously this year, I’m going back to school. Not to take classes, but to teach a course at my alma mater, Fanshawe College. I did this about a decade ago and thought it was interesting, so I was excited to give it another go. Additionally, after a friend mentioned that their kid wanted to learn Python, I developed an Intro to...

Security researchers learned that the Maze digital crime gang is in the process of shutting down its ransomware operations. Bleeping Computer began hearing rumors of the shutdown in early September 2020. In an email conversation, a ransomware attacker told the computer self-help site that the Maze gang had stopped encrypting new victims in September...

From small- and medium-sized organizations to large enterprises, every business is under continuous threat of security risk in today’s digital world. With the growing digital footprint and cloud adoption, organizations continue to experience sophisticated cyberthreats that hold the potential to disrupt business continuity. A vast majority of these...

Unknown individuals temporarily defaced the official campaign website of President Donald Trump with a cryptocurrency scam. Twitter user Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler was among the first to spot the defacement, which is believed to have occurred at around 16:00 PST on October 27. https://twitter.com/ggreschler/status/1321225292837367809 As reported by...

The worlds of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) are colliding. In July 2019, Automation.com cited a survey finding where 82% of respondents told Forrester and Nozomi Networks that their organizations were in the early stages of an IT-OT convergence. Some said their organizations were embracing this meeting more fully. This...

Digital attackers are increasingly turning their attention to the cloud. According to the 2020 Trustwave Global Security Report, the volume of attacks targeting cloud services more than doubled 7% in 2018 to 20% a year later. This growth made cloud services the third most-targeted environment after corporate and e-commerce at 54% and 22%,...

Amazon informed some of its customers about a security incident that involved the unauthorized disclosure of their email addresses. News of the security incident emerged over the weekend of October 23 when multiple users took to Twitter to voice their confusion over an email they had received from Amazon. In an email notification obtained by...

You don’t have to search very far in the news to see stories of websites being hacked and customer details being stolen. Stories about incidents involving industrial control systems (ICSes) and operational technology (OT) environments aren’t so common. But they are prevalent. Just the other week, for example, an airline company sent out an email...

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law that was established to transform the security landscape of the healthcare industry. Businesses that are found guilty of a breach or violation of HIPAA rules will have to face repercussions. Part of the HIPAA law includes the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule,...

The Australian Government is committed to protecting the essential services all Australians rely on by uplifting the security and resilience of critical infrastructure. Increasingly interconnected and interdependent critical infrastructure is delivering efficiencies and economic benefits to operations. However, connectivity without proper safeguards...

Loginizer, a popular plugin for protecting WordPress blogs from brute force attacks, has been found to contain its own severe vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers. The flaw, discovered by vulnerability researcher Slavco Mihajloski, opened up opportunities for cybercriminals to completely compromise WordPress sites. The flaw can be...

There are two significant trends occurring right now that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone reading this post. First, businesses are gathering and leveraging more and more data to improve their core services. Second, more compliance and regulatory standards are popping up from governments and private organizations. As these businesses realize that...

As I had mentioned previously, this year, I’m going back to school. Not to take classes, but to teach a course at my alma mater, Fanshawe College. I did this about a decade ago and thought it was interesting, so I was excited to give it another go. Additionally, after a friend mentioned that their kid wanted to learn Python, I developed an Intro to...

A public transport agency operating in Montréal announced that a ransomware attack had affected its website and other systems. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) disclosed the infection on a web page it created to keep customers updated about its services while its main site remains offline: Since the afternoon of October 19, the STM has...

It’s often said that humans are the weakest link in cybersecurity. Indeed, I’d have a hard time arguing that a computer that was sealed in a box, untouched by human hand, poses much of a security risk. But a computer that is unused has no purpose. It behooves security practitioners to get smarter about how we teach people to use those machines so...

A budding ransomware group donated part of the ransom demands that it had previously extorted from its victims to two charities. On October 13, the Darkside ransomware group announced the donations in a blog post on its dark web portal. As quoted by ZDNet: As we said in the first press release - we are targeting only large profitable corporations....

Cybersecurity is in the news again with the disclosure that Tesla, working in conjunction with the FBI, prevented a ransomware attack from being launched at its Gigafactory in Nevada. The cybercriminals targeted Tesla through one of its employees, whom they allegedly promised to pay $1 million in order to help them infect the company’s system with...

A few weeks, ago, technology news site The Verge reported on a new Ring security camera that is in fact a drone that flies around inside your house. Available beginning next year, the ‘Always Home Cam’ is supposed to give its owners a total view of their home without the need for multiple cameras. Those worried about break-ins or other kinds of...

By now, we have a good understanding of what secure remote access (SRA) is and why organizations might choose to enable it for their OT environments. We also know that securing IT-OT collaboration, leveraging guidance from best practice frameworks and using an automated solution can help organizations to implement this type of access. Even so, we...

A federal court in the United States issued a temporary restraining order against a tech support scheme that's alleged to have targeted U.S. consumers. On October 15, the U.S. District Court filed Southern District of Florida submitted a complaint against Michael Brian Cotter, 59, of Glendale,...