COVID 19: What Delta Variant Means to Business Recovery

Tom Field • August 4, 2021

Infection numbers are surging in the southern U.S., states and cities are enacting new mask mandates, and the fall flu season looms as the great unknown. Sound familiar? COVID-19 is back with the highly contagious Delta variant. Pandemic expert Regina Phelps discusses what that means for business recovery.

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Leadership & Executive Communication

Incident Response: Why Persistence Is Vital

Latest

Cyberwarfare / Nation-State Attacks

Chinese APT Groups Targeted Asian Telecoms

Dan Gunderman • August 3, 2021

Chinese APT groups compromised networks of telecom providers across Southeast Asia in an effort to harvest customers' sensitive communications, according to Cybereason. As in other Chinese cyberattacks, these APT campaigns exploited flaws in Microsoft Exchange servers.

Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Global Incident Response: The Rise of Integrity Attacks

Tom Field • August 3, 2021

Tom Kellermann calls it a new "Twilight Zone" - an era in which cybersecurity adversaries can unleash destructive attacks that manipulate time, data, audio and video. The cybersecurity strategist shares insights and analysis from his latest Global Incident Response Threat Report.

Governance & Risk Management

Words With Friends Breach: Zynga's Case Set for Arbitration

Mathew J. Schwartz • August 3, 2021

A consolidated class action lawsuit filed against mobile game developer Zynga after it suffered a 2019 data breach looks set to be handled instead via arbitration. A judge notes that users agreed to arbitration in the terms and conditions, and so far, they've failed to prove they suffered any financial harm.

Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Ransomware Actors Set Up a Call Center to Lure Victims

Jeremy Kirk • August 3, 2021

Ransomware actors have taken a page from the playbooks of tech support scammers of yore by guiding victims to download malware through persuasion over the phone. Microsoft says the technique is more dangerous than it first realized.

Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Ransomware Attackers Eying 'Pure Data-Leakage Model'

Mathew J. Schwartz • August 2, 2021

A funny thing happened on the way to the nonstop ransomware payday: Some groups hit the wrong targets - Ireland's health system, a major U.S. fuel pipeline - resulting in the U.S. moving to much more aggressively disrupt their business model, says Bob McArdle, director of cybercrime research at Trend Micro.

Critical Infrastructure Security

BlackMatter Ransomware Appears to Be Spawn of DarkSide

Mathew J. Schwartz • August 2, 2021

The new BlackMatter ransomware operation claimed to have incorporated "the best features of DarkSide, REvil and LockBit." Now, a security expert who obtained a BlackMatter decryptor reports that code similarities suggest "that we are dealing with a Darkside rebrand here."

3rd Party Risk Management

SolarWinds Attackers Accessed US Attorneys' Office Emails

Scott Ferguson • August 1, 2021

The Russian-linked group that targeted SolarWinds using a supply chain attack compromised at least one email account at 27 U.S. attorneys' offices in 15 states and Washington, D.C., throughout 2020, according to an update posted by the Justice Department.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

NIST Works to Create AI Risk Management Framework

Dan Gunderman • July 31, 2021

Citing a need to secure artificial intelligence technologies, NIST is working to create risk management guidance around the use of AI and machine learning, the agency has announced. NIST is seeking feedback to address governance challenges.

Cyberwarfare / Nation-State Attacks

Researchers Find More Servers Tied to Russian-Linked Attacks

Scott Ferguson • July 30, 2021

Researchers at the security firm RiskIQ have uncovered about 35 active command-and-control servers connected with an ongoing malware campaign that has been linked to a Russian-speaking attack group known as APT29 or Cozy Bear.

Governance & Risk Management

Patching Woes: Most Frequently Exploited CVEs Listed

Dan Gunderman • July 30, 2021

A joint cybersecurity advisory issued by several agencies this week highlighting the ongoing exploits of longstanding software vulnerabilities illustrates the woeful state of patch management, security experts say.

Business Continuity Management / Disaster Recovery

Ransomware Changes: DoppelPaymer Rebrands; Babuk Evolves

Mathew J. Schwartz • July 30, 2021

The ransomware landscape changes constantly as groups disappear, change approaches or rebrand. The DoppelPaymer operation, for example, appears to have reinvented itself as Grief, while the administrator of Babuk has launched a ransomware-friendly cybercrime forum called RAMP.

Fraud Management & Cybercrime

ISMG Editors’ Panel: Ransomware Update

Anna Delaney • July 30, 2021

In the latest weekly update, three editors at Information Security Media Group discuss important cybersecurity issues, including the latest ransomware trends, plus an update on NIST's "zero trust" initiative.