cyber security

A former cyber security chief says governments should ban organizations from paying money to ransomware gangs. Ciaran Martin likened such payment to bans on paying terrorist kidnappers. The call has had a mixed response, with critics calling it an ... unfair constraint on business freedoms. Martin was the first head of the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre. That's an organization overseen by the country's intelligence services that advises businesses and the public on cyber security threats. Ransomware has become a business worth an estimated $20 billion a year to criminals who gain ... (view more)

More than ever before, modern businesses rely on technology. Their efficient functioning relies on Internet services, which is unlikely to alter in the near future. As a result, as organizations get larger, computer networks develop, and massive ... volumes of data are sent every day between computer systems. According to a survey conducted by Accenture, 68% of organizations across various industries believe that cyber security threats are growing. According to an FBI assessment, cyberattacks have grown by 300% since the epidemic began. Securing businesses large and small is vital to ensure the ... (view more)

The United States is the third safest country for cyber crimes according to a newly-published study. However, the methodology means that might not reflect the actual risk to users. The figures come from Seon, a security company that specializes in ... automatically detecting online fraud. That makes the results (and the decision to publish them) a little surprising as such a company would have an obvious interest in suggesting cyber crime is a particularly big risk in larger, wealthier countries full of potential customers. Overall the results showed Denmark as the safest country, just ahead of ... (view more)

A ransomware gang said to have Russian links appears to have been knocked offline. The REvil group recently demanded a $70 million ransom after a major attack. The group was linked to two recent attacks, the first on an international meat processing ... company. JBS, which is estimated to process 20 percent of the beef and pork sold in the US, had to shut down production while dealing with the breach. An even more serious attack targeted Kaseya, a company that not only offers computing services to businesses, but also powers many managed service providers that run IT for their own clients. The ... (view more)

Google says it's suffered zero phishing attacks since it started making staff use a physical key to log in to work accounts. Of course, it's possible it's been hit with attacks it doesn't know about. The measures were taken to prevent against ... phishing attacks in which scammers try to trick victims into following a link and opening a bogus website that appears to be from a legitimate organization. The idea is that they then type in login details which the scammers can use to access their account on the real website. This can be particularly problematic with business accounts that may house ... (view more)