The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization “established to support victims of identity crime.” The recently released Data Breach Annual Report provides statistics and perspectives on cyberattacks. Here’s what organizations need to know: The overall number of data breaches rose a whopping 68 percent in 2021. There were 1,862 individual breaches last year, surpassing 2020’s …
Top Cybersecurity Issues to Watch Out For in 2022
One of the most challenging aspects of cybersecurity is preparedness. With technology, user habits, and attack styles changing over the past few years and showing no sign of slowing down, cyberattacks seem like a never-ending onslaught. As we start 2022, organizations need to do their best and prepare for future incidents. Auditing and evaluating the state of their internal security …
The City of Keizer Enhances Cybersecurity by Eliminating Compromised Passwords
The City of Keizer is a beautiful community in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The city offers an ideal environment, delivering a range of services to citizens, from parks and public works to police protection. However, even from its earliest days, there have been hazards to overcome. As a settlement in the 1800s, floods forced the community to rebuild on …
Reimagining Ransomware Responses
Planning, Protecting and Not Paying Your company is aware of the many attempts that hackers make every day to infiltrate organizations, steal data, and demand ransoms. Hacking methods seem to propagate rapidly, but ransomware has been making the headlines regularly in the past two years. Ransomware, a form of malware, accounted for about ten percent of the breaches collated in …
To Pay Up or Not Pay Up
Investigating the repercussions of ransomware attacks The number of ransomware attacks and the frequency of institutions paying those ransomshas increased over the past years. Unfortunately, this hasn’t correlated with those institutions getting their data or systems back. So, should organizations stop paying ransoms? What is ransomware? Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts the victim organization or individual’s data. …
Lessons from the Colonial Pipeline Breach
One of the largest, most economically devastating ransomware attacks occurred less than a month ago, and details of the attack are starting to become clearer. So what was the catalyst for this attack? It was as simple as a compromised password. As initially reported by Bloomberg, DarkSide was able to breach Colonial Pipeline and inject ransomware, crippling their infrastructure and …