Cybersecurity Expert

What Happened? Twitter confirmed 130 celebrity Twitter accounts were targeted in the cyberattack  on Wednesday 15th July, with 45 successfully compromised. The hacked Twitter accounts included high profile individuals such as  Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Kim Kardashian, and Joe Biden. Their accounts were used to send a tweet to scam Bitcoin out of their millions of followers. Scam Social Engineering Tweet sent from Bill Gates' Twitter Account Twitter quickly reacted to the hack by taking an unprecedented step of temporarily preventing all verified users from tweeting, including yours truly;  I was trying to warn people about the attack but my tweets were repeatedly prevented from posting. Before the scam tweets were taken down m ore than £80,000 ($100,000) was sent to the scam Tweet's advertised Bitcoin address. T he FBI is investigating the incident. How the Twitter Accounts were Compromised Twitter said ha...

Guest post by Richard Hahn, Consulting Manager, Sungard Availability Services According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), approximately 14.2 million people (44% of the total number of working adults) have worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic. To put these figures into perspective, this number stood at around 1.7 million in 2019 , representing just 5% of the total working population. While these statistics are unsurprising, it’s clear that the paradigm of working from home every day was sudden and significant. Few businesses can claim to have anticipated such a scenario, nor to have had the business continuity planning capabilities to contend with its consequences. For example, one of the biggest cybersecurity trends to have emerged in recent weeks is a surge in phishing attacks targeting remote workers. As will be described in this article, phishing thrives on isolation, uncertainty and periods of change, which have all been common characteristics of the working ...

Guest Post by Jennifer Bell Learn How Hackers Steal and Exploit Information to Ensure This Doesn’t Happen to You  Cybersecurity is an important topic to know and understand in order to keep your information safe and secure. Even more specifically, it’s important to know and understand mobile security as well. Mobile security, especially with iPhones, is crucial as hackers are becoming smarter and more creative when it comes to iCloud hacks. Apple has partnered with network hardware and insurance companies such as Cisco and Aon to provide security against data breaches; but how can you ensure that even with these Apple partnerships that your iPhone is secure and protected against hackers? Here are the most common ways that hackers get into iPhones to steal or exploit personal information, keep these points in mind to best protect yourself from mobile security hacks. Poor Passwords Often, poor password choices or poor password management allows hackers to easily hack into iPhones ...

Guest Post by Matt Cable, VP Solutions Architects & MD Europe, Certes Networks At the end of 2019, it was reported that the number of unfilled global IT security positions had reached over four million professionals, up from almost three million at the same time the previous year. This included 561,000 in North America and a staggering 2.6 million in APAC. The cybersecurity industry clearly has some gaps to fill. But it’s not just the number of open positions that presents an issue.  Research also shows that nearly half of firms are unable to carry out the basic tasks outlined in the UK government’s Cyber Essentials scheme, such as setting up firewalls, storing data and removing malware. Although this figure has improved since 2018, it is still far too high and is a growing concern. To compound matters, the disruption of COVID-19 this year has triggered a larger volume of attack vectors, with more employees working from home without sufficient security protocols and cyber att...

Guest Post by the information security experts at  Security Risk Management Ltd If promoting a positive company-wide security culture had been a challenge before the Covid-19 pandemic, that challenge has just become a whole lot more difficult. That is because the widespread move to remote working has added another layer of vulnerability. It is not simply a question of sharing office systems across a range of settings and the fact that some are using home computers (frequently shared with personal accounts); instead, it is that individuals are now one step removed from the reach of those responsible for in-house information security, usually the Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), and the organisation’s security protocols. This fact has not been wasted on ever-opportunistic hackers Email phishing attacks target individuals, often persuading them to check or type passwords on malicious domains that appear to be legitimate. Researchers have found a 600 per cent increase...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, June 2020. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a sophisticated nation-state actor is causing increasing havoc by attacking the country’s government, corporate institutions, and his country's critical infrastructure operators . He said,  “We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the tradecraft used". While Morrison didn't actually name the specific country responsible in his statement, Reuters said its sources confirmed China was the culprit.  Political t ensions have ramped up between Australia and China in recent months after Australia called for an investigation into China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. China then reacted by placing tariffs on Australian exports and banning shipments of beef from Australia . Why am I leading a UK cyber...