Thursday 1 June 2017

Cyber Security Roundup for May 2017

The WannaCry ransomware outbreak within the NHS dominated the national media headlines earlier this month. Impacting 45 NHS sites in England and Scotland, the massive cyber attack led to cancelled operations and diversions of emergency medical services. The WannaCry outbreak was not just limited to the NHS, as thousands of computers were shut down at companies in almost 100 countries. After an initial infection via a phishing email and file encryption, the ransomware has the added ability to rapidly self-replicate, infecting other networked Windows computers without Microsoft’s March 2017 critical update (MS17-010) installed, this drove the swift spread of the malware within large organisations and across the world.

Debenhams had 26,000 customer personal details stolen through its flowers service website, which was operated on Debenhams behalf by a third party company. The data breach has been reported to the ICO.

With a year to ago until General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into law, there were several news reports stating UK businesses need to do more to prepare and highlighting the new data breach fines which could run into Billions for FTSE 100 companies.

If you live in Manchester, your computer is 4 times more likely to be infected with malware than elsewhere in the world according to statstics by Enigma Software Group.

Over in the United States, Brooks Brothers disclosed a major payment card breach, after an individual installed malicious software which captured credit card information within payment systems at locations across the USA and Puerto Rico for 11 months, a remind of the importance of PCI DSS compliance where businesses store, process and/or transmits credit/debit card data (cardholder data). 

Hackers stole a copy of Disney's forthcoming Pirates of the Caribbean film, and tried to hold Disney ransom, Disney didn't pay.

Interesting blog post by MacKeeper Security, on how cyber criminals are linking various stolen credential datasets to leverage access to systems.

And finally, it was another busy month of security update releases by Microsoft and Adobe, the WannaCry impact on the NHS is a stark warning to ensure all newly issued critical security updates are quickly applied

NEWS

AWARENESS, EDUCATION AND THREAT INTELLIGENCE

REPORTS

No comments: