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Cybersecurity News & Trends

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This week governments in the U.S. and U.K. geared up to fight back against the growing threat of ransomware.


SonicWall in the News

NCSC updates schools ransomware guidance amid surge — Computer Weekly

  • The National Cyber Security Centre says it is dealing with a renewed surge of ransomware attacks targeting schools, colleges and universities.

Orange Business Services taps Ericsson for enterprise IoT security — Computer Weekly

  • According to the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, malware attacks on IoT devices in 2020 jumped by 66% compared with 2019.

SonicWall Sheds Light On Ransomware Attacks As NCSC Announces Continued Rise — Information Security Buzz

  • Last week, NCSC announced it is investigating another increase in ransomware attacks against educational institutions in the UK.

Three Best Practices to Neutralize Ransomware Attacks — Dataversity

  • Since 2019, ransomware attacks have soared by 158% in North America and by 62% globally, according to the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report — which also stated that cybercriminals are using more sophisticated tactics to try to shut down companies in exchange for a data “ransom.”

Ransomware attacks on the UK education sector — Professional Security

  • “Ransomware attackers have identified universities’ vulnerabilities as providing something valuable as well as information that is readily exportable,” Terry Greer-King, VP EMEA of SonicWall, said. “Hackers can not only disable networks, but they can also thoroughly infiltrate the systems and … access an organization’s records, bypassing security altogether.”

Are you certain you are on the right side of defending against tomorrow’s APTs? — Everything Industrial

  • Ashley Lawrence, SonicWall Regional Sales Senior Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa, is featured for his views on Advanced Persistent Threats and how SonicWall’s RTDMI and Capture ATP can help protect businesses.

Industry News

Security researcher says attacks on Russian government have Chinese fingerprints – and typos, too — The Register

  • An advanced persistent threat that Russia found inside government systems seems to have come from a Chinese entity rather than a western group, security researchers say.

U.S. Senate passes sweeping bill to address China tech threat — Reuters

  • The U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to approve a sweeping package of legislation intended to boost the country’s ability to compete with Chinese technology.

Hacker Known as Max Is 55-Year-Old Woman From Russia, U.S. Says — Bloomberg

  • Witte appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge on June 4 for her arraignment, where she waived her rights to a detention hearing.

LinkedIn asks Supreme Court to review whether data scraping is prohibited hacking — The Washington Times

  • Social networking platform LinkedIn asked the Supreme Court to review whether the “scraping” of data from its website equates to illegal hacking under federal law.

JBS Hackers Took Data From Australia and Brazil, Researcher Says — Bloomberg

  • Security Scorecard found evidence that hackers took data from a JBS location in Brazil in April and May. The attackers began taking large amounts of data from the company’s network in March and continued until the hack was discovered late last month.

What Hackers Can Learn About You From Your Social-Media Profile — The Wall Street Journal

  • That post you ‘liked’ on Facebook? Your alma mater on LinkedIn? They are all clues that can make you — and your company — vulnerable.

Ransomware Struck Another Pipeline Firm—and 70GB of Data Leaked — Wired 

  • LineStar Integrity Services was hacked around the same time as Colonial Pipeline, and now radical transparency activists have brought the attack to light.

CISA Announces Vulnerability Disclosure Policy Platform — Security Week

  • The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) today announced that it has partnered with the crowdsourced cybersecurity community for the launch of its vulnerability disclosure policy (VDP) platform.

Ransomware attack hits House members’ web tool to communicate with voters — The Washington Times

  • Cybercriminals have attacked a web tool that members of the House of Representatives use to communicate with voters.

Insurer Chubb paid $65,000 to help a city unlock ransomware in 2018. A second hack was more expensive. — Cyberscoop

  • A city in California didn’t disclose a ransomware payment for more than two years after its insurer covered the cost, the city manager acknowledged amid yet another ransomware attack on the municipality.

First Known Malware Surfaces Targeting Windows Containers — Dark Reading 

  • Siloscape is designed to create a backdoor in Kubernetes clusters to run malicious containers.

Ransomware warning: There’s been another spike in attacks on schools and universities — ZDNet

  • NCSC alert says there’s been a rise in ransomware attacks targeting the education sector at a critical time in the academic calendar.

The cost of ransomware attacks worldwide will go beyond $265 billion in the next decade — ZDNet

  • Current estimates suggest that ransomware will cost us approximately $20 billion this year, a 57x jump from 2015.

U.S. officials up pressure on firms, foreign adversaries over cyberattacks — The Wall Street Journal

  • President Joe Biden is reportedly considering all options, including a military response, to counter the growing threat.

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Amber Wolff
Senior Digital Copywriter | SonicWall
Amber Wolff is the Senior Digital Copywriter for SonicWall. Prior to joining the SonicWall team, Amber was a cybersecurity blogger and content creator, covering a wide variety of products and topics surrounding enterprise security. She spent the earlier part of her career in advertising, where she wrote and edited for a number of national clients.