Cybersecurity Expert

  I ASME  del iv ers Cyber Essentials on behalf of UK  NCSC By Sam Jones | Cyber Tec Security  and Dave Whitelegg What is  Cyber Essentials?  If you are just hearing about the Cyber Essentials scheme, read on as we unpack 10 things you might not know about Cyber Essentials. 1. UK Gov Launched Cyber Essentials in 2014 The UK Government  National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) published its ‘10 Steps to Cyber Security in 2012' , after the UK Government agencies recognised small-medium sized UK businesses require further cybersecurity guidance and support in order to protect the British digital dependant economy.  This led to the development of five critical 'cyber essentials' technical security controls which provides a minimum level of cybersecurity protection. Assurance of the adoption of these five security controls by an organisation provides a good degree of confidence an organisation is protected against the most common cyber threats, th...

The United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) handled a record number of cybersecurity incidents over the last year, a 20% increase in cases handled the year before. With the increasing number and more innovative nature of cyber attacks, businesses of all sizes must prioritise cybersecurity. However, the fundamental starting point of any organisation’s security infrastructure must be a trained and aware workforce, who understand their responsibility in keeping business data safe. Oliver Paterson, Product Expert, VIPRE Security Awareness Training and Safesend , explains. Business Size Doesn’t Matter Whether a business is a start-up or a larger corporate organisation, all companies are at risk of a cyber-attack. We often see million-pound enterprises on the news when they suffer from a data breach, such as Estée Lauder, Microsoft and Broadvoice . But, no organisation is too small to target, including small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), who are the target for an es...

  A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, February 2021. Serious Linux Vulnerability Last month  a newly discovered critical vulnerability in 'sudo', a fundamental program present in all Linux and Unix operating systems caught my eye. The sudo vulnerability aka  CVE-2001-3156 , seemed to go under the radar after it was announced and patches were released on 26th January 2021. I  wrote a blog post  about my concerns given Linux is embedded everywhere, yet many of these systems are rarely, and even never updated with security updates. From IoT devices to internet-based services, the security of countless devices and web-based services' are dependant upon a secure Linux account privilege model. While these Linux operating systems remain unpatched to prevent exploitation of the CVE-2021-3156 vulnerability, there are waiting to be hacked. Npower App Hack Npowe...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, December 2020. A suspected nation-state sophisticated cyber-attack of SolarWinds which led to the distribution of a tainted version the SolarWinds Orion network monitoring tool, compromising their customers, dominated the cyber headlines in mid-December 2020.  This was not only one of the most significant cyberattacks of 2020 but perhaps of all time. The United States news media reported the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies, nuclear labs, the Commerce, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security departments, and several utilities were all compromised by the attack. For the full details of the SolarWinds cyber-attack see my article  Sunburst: SolarWinds Orion Compromise Overview Two other cyberattacks are possibly linked to the SolarWinds hack was also reported, the cyber-theft of sophisticated hacking tools from  cybersecurity fi...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, November 2020. Manchester United FC remains impacted by a seemly major cyber-attack, which I covered in a blog post titled  The Multi-Million Pound Manchester United Hack . At this point, United have provided few details about their cyber-attack which has been impacting club's IT systems for well over a week. However, the UK media are widely reporting United's leaky IT defences was unable to prevent a ransomware attack and data theft.   London's Hackney Borough Council have also been tight-lipped about what they describe as " a serious cyber-attack "  which has impacted its service delivery to Londoners. Like United, this attack has all the hallmarks of a mass ransomware outbreak. Both Manchester United and Hacknet Council said they are working UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Man.Utd hit by ransomware, w...

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about the Manchester City Billion Pound Hack , which explored cyberattacks within elite football. Now it is the turn of City big rivals Manchester United, after they reported their IT systems had been impacted by a cyber-attack , widely reported in the UK media as a cyber-extortion attack. In the last couple of years, cybercriminals have significantly ramped up efforts in targeting UK businesses with cyber extortion attacks, using ransomware malware and confidential data theft to leverage their victims into paying large ransom payments anonymously in Bitcoin. Many businesses have been quick to pay out ransoms after their operations ground to halt due to their IT systems being rendered unusable due to ransomware, and also to avoid dumping their confidential data on the internet by the cybercriminals.   In July 2020 the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) specially warned that cybercriminals were targeting UK sports teams with ransomwar...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, October 2020. London's Hackney Borough Council has been tight-lipped about "a serious cyber-attack" which took down its IT systems, impacting its service delivery to citizens. Providing scant information about the attack, but it does have all the hallmarks of a ransomware outbreak. The council says it is working with the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Ministry of Housing to investigate and understand the impact of the incident. Ransomware attacks continue to be a major blight for UK public services, with councils to hospitals struggling to defend their IT systems against ransomware. Earlier this year Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council said it had been hit by a ransomware attack, which cost it more than £10m. It looks like the ransomware will continue to pose a major threat to the UK for some time to c...

Written by Sarah Doherty, Product Marketing Manager at  iland Around the world, IT teams are struggling with choosing between less critical, but important tasks, versus focusing on innovative projects to help transform your business. Both are necessary for your business and need to be actioned, but should your team do all of it? Have you thought about allowing someone else to guide you through the process while your internal team continues to focus on transforming the business?  DRaaS Data protection dilemma; outsourcing or self-managing? Disaster recovery can take a lot of time to properly implement so it may be the right time to consider a third-party provider who can help with some of the more routine and technical aspects of your disaster recovery planning. This help can free up some of your staff’s valuable time while also safeguarding your vital data. Outsourcing your data protection functions vs. managing them yourself Information technology has raised many ques...

A roundup of UK focused Cyber and Information Security News, Blog Posts, Reports and general Threat Intelligence from the previous calendar month, May 2020. EasyJet's disclosure of a "highly sophisticated cyber-attack", which occurred in January 2020, impacting 9 million of their customers was the biggest cybersecurity story of May 2020 in the UK. Although no details about this 'cyber-attack' were disclosed, other than 2,208 customers had their credit card details accessed.   Using terms like "highly sophisticated" without providing any actual details of the cyberattack makes one think back to when TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding described a cyber-attack as " significant and sustained cyber-attack " in 2015. In TalkTalk's case, that cyber attack turned out to be a bunch of teenage kids taking advantage of a then 10-year-old SQL injection vulnerability.  City A.M. described Dido's responses as "naive", noting when asked if the aff...