As a penetration tester Joshua Crumbaugh, who now heads the Alabama-based security awareness training firm PeopleSec, says employees are the real block to improving digital security. “I would argue 100 per cent of breaches are the result of people,” he told the International Cyber Security and Intelligence Conference Wednesday. In fact in an interview he argued the overwhelming amount of an organization’s cyber spending should go to More »
At the time of this post, it’s been nearly one month now since the City of Baltimore was hit with a nasty Ransomware attack that locked down its servers and left the city government without email, telecommunications, and disrupted real-estate transactions and bill payments.. Some security experts meanwhile have obtained and studied samples of the so-called Robbinhood Ransomware used in the attack. Like most Ransomware More »
IT security experts say they still come across business leaders in Canada who don’t believe their organization will be targeted for a cyber attack. A new report from security vendor Proofpoint should help dispel that. Looking at data from customer devices, the company found that between January 1 and May 1, threat actors conducted thousands of malicious email campaigns, hundreds of which were sent to More »
Canadian Businesses have lost $2.96 million in business disruption, and $3.8 million in information loss according to the annual Accenture Cost of Cybercrime survey 2018. (for a copy of the report click here) Malicious insiders and malicious code were the most expensive type of attacks, costing Canadian respondents on average, US$3.3 million, compared to the average of all companies surveyed of US$1.6 million. These attacks More »
Small and mid-sized companies face a dilemma when it comes to cyber security: If they can’t afford full-time infosec experts to effectively defend themselves, what and how much can they afford to do? To answer, the government hopes, is in a new guide issued by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The Centre is the recently-established federal advisory agency on security. It’s a unit of More »
Canada faced the second biggest increase in malware attacks last year among customers according to corporate security vendor SonicWall. Malware attacks detected by those using SonicWall firewalls and other security devices hit 432.2 million, up 103 per cent over 2017, according to a report released Tuesday by the company in its annual cyber threat report. By comparison, attacks against Brazil were up 119 per cent More »
Windows 7 is now in extended support and Microsoft’s end-of-service date for Windows 7 is January 14, 2020 Now, we here at HSL consider any OS in ‘extended support’ to be End Of Life as the manufacturer may or may not publish a fix for any bugs found. There is no obligation or guaranty that a patch will be released if an issue is found. More »
Bad habits die hard, according to SplashData’s eighth annual list of Worst Passwords of the Year. After evaluating more than 5 million passwords leaked on the Internet, the company found that computer users continue using the same predictable, easily guessable passwords. Using these passwords will put anyone at substantial risk of being hacked and having their identities stolen. While terrible passwords such as “123456” and More »
The New York Times has reported that the Marriott hotel chain asked guests checking in for a treasure trove of personal information: credit cards, addresses and sometimes passport numbers. On Friday November 30, 2018 consumers learned the risk. Marriott International revealed that hackers had breached its Starwood reservation system and had stolen the personal data of up to 500 million guests. Here is the full More »
A nameless, faceless hacker is extorting you. Pay $857 in Bitcoin or videos and screenshots from your “dark secret life” — plus the browsing history on your phone, tablet and computer — will be shared with family, friends and the world. Read the rest of the article by clicking here