Tag: Malware

cybercriminals

Whitepaper Download: Protecting Data in the Healthcare Industry

All it takes is one slipup to forever change the public’s outlook on your organization. This is especially true for healthcare providers. Your patients need to trust that your staff can provide them with the care they need and that your IT system won’t put their protected health information (PHI) at risk. There’s nothing like suffering a data breach to potentially lose that trust forever. HIPAA urges you to check for compliance once a year, but that simply isn’t good enough. Cyber-attacks are increasing every year. Data breaches are more prominent than ever. Cybercriminals are only growing bolder — we just recently detailed how one breach took down a major American city — for example. Ask yourself this: Are you

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endpoint protection

A Recent Anti-Malware Victory

Cybercriminals make a lot of news by pulling off headline-grabbing data breaches. Often, this can make these attackers seem invincible, like there are no systems or good guys capable of standing up to them. This is, of course, anything but true. Cyber-attacks can be defeated and the criminals behind them can be apprehended. Today, we’re going to take a look at a recent win for the good guys. What Happened Recently, one of the key distributors of ransomware, tech support schemes and exploit kits known as “ElTest” was severely hampered by enterprising researchers. As a quick refresher, malware and ransomware are often installed on computers when users unknowingly visit infected sites. While oftentimes social engineering tactics are used to guide

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Malware

Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Rooting Out Hidden Threats

In 2015, ransomware and malware related attacks cost businesses around the world $325 million. This was considered to be a relatively acceptable figure. Rumors spread throughout the cybersecurity industry that a future dominated by cybercrimes was something we might be able to dodge. While a high amount, the $325 million value just didn’t meet the worst-case scenario many had expected. Was it possible everyone drastically overestimated how popular these attack methods would become? Fast forward two years later, as ransomware-based attacks alone are expected to reach $5 billion in costs to organizations this year. Obviously, this is an astronomical increase in the spread and effectiveness of cyberattacks. It is, however, just the tip of the iceberg. While ransomware attacks like

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Compromise Assessment

Windows Vulnerability

Oftentimes, cyber attackers are able to infiltrate the networks of organizations through holes in older programs which have not been updated. Recently, a malware known as “DoublePulsar” has been found targeting un-patched Windows systems, inserting itself within networks and laying seeds for future ransomware attacks. Here’s what’s currently known about this threat and what steps you can take to prevent yourself from falling victim to it. An Advanced Attacker As reported in Bank Info Security, a group of hackers known as the “Shadow Brokers” – believed to have ties with the Russian government – released a set of attack tools which exploit flaws in older versions of Windows. One of these tools, DoublePulsar, has been adopted by attackers and implanted in

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iot

Keeping Up With Multiplying Cybersecurity Threats: Vulnerability Management

The world of cybersecurity has never lacked its share of individuals and programs out there looking to take advantage of others, but there’s definitely never been this many cyber criminals trying to capitalize on new methods of attack and lacking defenses. Let’s take a look at some cybersecurity statistics from 2016 as reported on by Forbes: AT&T found that there was a 485% increase in the number of times attackers search IoT devices for vulnerabilities Cisco discovered a 221% increase of compromised WordPress websites Dell noticed malware attacks almost doubled from 2015, finishing the year with 8.19 billion attacks IBM concluded the healthcare industry was more frequently attacked than any other –with financial services and manufacturing trailing behind None of

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Cybersecurity

In Plain Sight: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

Zero-day vulnerability is a futuristic sounding term – you can almost picture it as the name of a science fiction novel – but it presents a great threat to organizations across all industries. These vulnerabilities are holes in software which lack a patch or fix, meaning they can be exploited by clever cyber criminals to steal your information. Back in 2014, Anthem, a major US health insurer, suffered what was then the biggest healthcare breach ever. This attack was conducted by a group known as “Black Vine,” who used zero-day vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer to carry out the attack. Recently, RAND corporation, a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer

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Cybersecurity

The Biggest Threats of 2016 and Predictions for 2017

This year had its share of headline grabbing cybersecurity news. From Yahoo’s many breaches, to new threats in phishing and social engineering, 2016 wasn’t short on new threats. With the year wrapping up, we wanted to take a minute to recap what we saw as the biggest threats of 2016, what to prepare for in 2017 and what you can do right now to protect yourself. The Biggest Cybersecurity Threat of 2016 By far, the most significant cybersecurity threat of 2016 was ransomware. The Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2016 states that the rate of ransomware attacks against businesses increased this year from one every two minutes in January to one every 40 seconds in September. Kaspersky Lab detected 2,900 ransomware variations

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Compromise Assessment

Compromise Assessment: Rooting Out Hidden Attackers

We often think of data breaches as these big, climactic events. Something like the bank robberies you might see in big budget movies. One minute, everyth is fine. The next, YaPostTypes Permalinkshoo or Target’s doors are being kicked down; they’re under attack. Millions of passwords, bank account info and more are made off with in an instant. Of course, it’s not really like that. There aren’t any getaway cars out front or dramatic fight scenes as the criminals steal information. Cyber-attacks don’t normally set off alarms – it’s in cyber criminals’ best interest to quietly sneak in so they can steal as much information as they can for as long as possible. These are stealth attacks that can linger, sometimes for years. To combat

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