News

IT security

• January 29, 2021 29 Jan'21

  Human factor dominates Australia’s latest data breach numbers

  The number of data breaches resulting from human error increased by 18% in the second half of 2020, according to Australian government’s latest notifiable data breaches report

• January 28, 2021 28 Jan'21

  Apprenticeships may be a solution to cyber skills shortage, say insiders

  Cyber security professionals are open to new approaches to finding sorely needed talent, according to a poll

• January 28, 2021 28 Jan'21

  End of Emotet: A blow to cyber crime, but don’t drop your guard

  The takedown of Emotet is a huge event with repercussions that will reverberate across the cyber criminal world, but unfortunately that’s not to say there will be much of a long-term impact

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Pandemic response has improved privacy posture, says Cisco

  Data privacy seems to be ‘coming of age’ to some extent and organisational responses to Covid-19 may be partly responsible, according to a report

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Mimecast breach was work of SolarWinds attackers

  Mimecast’s investigation into a January 2021 breach of its systems turns up evidence that the culprit was the same group that targeted SolarWinds in December

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Emotet botnet goes offline as cops seize servers

  The Emotet botnet has been disrupted and knocked offline after a major international effort by law enforcement

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Grindr complaint results in €9.6m GDPR fine

  Norway’s data protection authority plans to apply a fine totalling 10% of LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr’s revenues over its data sharing practices

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Emergency Apple updates patch exploited zero-days

  Three vulnerabilities could give attackers full control of their target Apple devices, and must be patched immediately

• January 27, 2021 27 Jan'21

  Global VPN downloads surge in 2020

  Repressive regimes’ regulatory demands and remote working see virtual private network usage rocket over the past 12 months

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  Conservatives broke data law to racially profile millions

  The Conservative Party acted illegally in collecting data that inferred voters’ ethnicity and religious background, a Select Committee has heard

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  North Korean state attacks legitimate security researchers

  Threat researchers specialising in vulnerability research and development appear to be being targeted by a North Korean state-backed group

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  Saudi IT spending to hit $11bn in 2021

  Saudi Arabian organisations will spend about $11bn on IT this year, with emerging technologies high on shopping lists

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  ICO extends commissioner Denham’s term of office

  Extension of Elizabeth Denham’s tenure as information commissioner will give the government more time to appoint her successor

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  Cyber fraud a national security issue, says Rusi report

  A report from the Rusi think tank calls for fresh approaches to how we think about fighting fraud

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  Gartner: IT budgets shift to mature processes around remote business

  The pandemic forced businesses to work remotely. Now, almost a year on, CIOs must consider the IT to run long-term remote business strategies

• January 25, 2021 25 Jan'21

  Cracking the message in a bottle

  Between 2016 and 2019, a number of bottles washed ashore in Hamburg, each containing an ‘uncrackable’ message

• January 25, 2021 25 Jan'21

  Are banks overburdened with responsibility for money lost to online scams?

  Bank boss calls for cross-industry cooperation to reduce scams that trick people into making instant payments online

• January 22, 2021 22 Jan'21

  ICO resumes adtech investigation

  The UK Information Commissioner’s Office was criticised for ending its investigation into alleged malpractice in advertising technology, but has now resumed its probe

• January 22, 2021 22 Jan'21

  Sepa data leaks as agency resists ransom demands

  The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is resisting extortion demands from a ransomware gang, but has suffered a data leak in retaliation

• January 22, 2021 22 Jan'21

  Google threatens to cut off Australia

  Google’s threat to end its Australian Search operation comes in the face of new legislation that would force it to pay media publishers for news content

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Immigration exemption in data protection law faces further legal challenge

  Human rights groups set to take legal challenge against immigration exemption to Court of Appeal on the basis that everyone, regardless of their nationality or residence, should have their fundamental rights and freedoms protected as stated in the ...

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Hackney Council tenders for cyber security upgrade

  Suppliers are being invited to tender for enhanced cyber security capabilities at ransomware victim Hackney Council

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Gamarue malware found on government-issued school laptops

  Devices handed out by the government to support vulnerable children contain malware that appears to be contacting C2 infrastructure in Russia

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Two-thirds of CISOs say they’ll be cyber attack victims this year

  Security professionals are ever alert to the threats they face, but some still seem to think it is unlikely they will be attacked

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Interview: Tony Porter, chief privacy officer, Corsight AI

  Tony Porter speaks to Computer Weekly about the changes in facial-recognition during his time as surveillance camera commissioner, the ethics of using the technology, and his new role as chief privacy officer at Corsight AI

• January 21, 2021 21 Jan'21

  Incompetent cyber criminals leak data in opsec failure

  Even cyber criminals need to pay attention to their information security posture, as this cautionary tale uncovered by Check Point reveals

• January 20, 2021 20 Jan'21

  Should I be worried about MFA-bypassing pass-the-cookie attacks?

  Malicious actors bypassed multi-factor authentication using so-called pass-the-cookie attacks, but how worrying is this and what is the risk to organisations?

• January 20, 2021 20 Jan'21

  Malwarebytes also hit by SolarWinds attackers

  The nation state group that attacked SolarWinds in December got inside Malwarebytes by exploiting privileged access to its Microsoft Office 365 tenant, the firm reveals

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  Legacy security architectures threaten to disrupt remote working

  Annual survey of IT leaders finds network security is of prime concern as most companies continue with work-from-home policies

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  Questions raised by New Zealand central bank boss, following cyber attack investigation

  The governor of New Zealand’s central bank said the organisation must answer questions about its security following a ‘significant’ attack

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  UK fraud agency deploys ArcGIS dashboard for data sharing

  The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau says it has achieved improved transparency with the public, as well as saving 3,500 staff hours and £100,000

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  Value of GDPR fines shows dramatic increase in 2020

  European regulators imposed almost €160m worth of fines during the past 12 months, a substantial rise

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  Click fraud levels reach new heights in pandemic

  Small companies risk losing £10,000 a year, and enterprises as much as £520,000, to cyber criminals as click fraud volumes spike

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  Criminals fiddled stolen Covid-19 vaccine data to damage trust

  Malicious actors manipulated stolen Covid-19 data in a way clearly intended to damage public trust in vaccines, says the EMA

• January 19, 2021 19 Jan'21

  MAS offers guidance on mitigating supply chain threats

  Monetary Authority of Singapore revises its technology risk management guidelines to help the financial sector guard against supply chain attacks

• January 18, 2021 18 Jan'21

  MoD reports 18% rise in data loss incidents

  The Ministry of Defence reported more than five hundred data security incidents in 2019-20, with seven serious enough to warrant disclosure to the ICO

• January 18, 2021 18 Jan'21

  Australians lost A$176m to scams in 2020

  Investment scams topped the list of scams, which grew by 23.1% in 2020 as criminals exploited human psychology using social engineering

• January 17, 2021 17 Jan'21

  NCSC CyberFirst Girls 2021 contest kicks off

  UK’s national cyber agency says it has already had hundreds of entrants in spite of the challenges presented by the pandemic

• January 15, 2021 15 Jan'21

  150,000 records accidentally wiped from police systems

  Home Office claims data wiped from national police systems only relates to people who have never been convicted of a crime or had further police action taken against them following an arrest

• January 15, 2021 15 Jan'21

  US cyber security agencies get $9bn in Biden plan

  New funding proposals come as US government reels from the impact of the December 2020 SolarWinds attack

• January 15, 2021 15 Jan'21

  Coalition proposes secure standard model for Covid-19 passports

  Vaccination Credential Initiative is working to ensure that people vaccinated against Covid-19 can access their records in a secure, verifiable and privacy-preserving way

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  All EU states can take data protection cases against Facebook, says EU court

  An opinion from the European Court of Justice has the potential to lead to a flood of privacy complaints against Facebook if upheld

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  Experian calls for less bureaucratic data regulations

  Open banking requires cross-industry collaboration, but sharing personal data requires explicit consent, which can become a bottleneck

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  Old, on-premise systems targeted in Hackney ransomware attack

  Council reveals some more insight into how the Pysa ransomware gang infiltrated its systems by exploiting legacy technology

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  Unforeseen consequences of new technologies put UK at risk

  Lords committee told that the risks associated with various emerging digital technologies must be assessed together, with input from UK citizens, if the government is to avoid ‘siloisation’ of fundamentally interconnected problems

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  APAC firms grapple with cyber security amid pandemic

  Some aspects of cyber security have taken a backseat as companies across the Asia-Pacific region rush to shore up their infrastructure to cope with the demands of remote work

• January 13, 2021 13 Jan'21

  Court to rule on Facebook data sharing after Schrems drops legal challenge against Irish regulator

  Irish High Court says it will issue a judgment as soon as possible over a draft decision by Ireland’s data protection commissioner to order Facebook to stop the transfer of data about EU citizens to datacentres in the US

• January 13, 2021 13 Jan'21

  Three-quarters of finance firms report more potentially criminal activity in their networks

  Fears of failing to comply with strict regulations grow as financial services firms identify more suspicious financial activity on their networks

• January 13, 2021 13 Jan'21

  World’s largest dark web market disrupted in major police operation

  Coordinated international operation including Europol and the UK’s National Crime Agency has successfully taken DarkMarket offline

• January 13, 2021 13 Jan'21

  Covid-19 immunity passport tests to begin in UK

  A Covid-19 immunity and vaccination passport developed by two UK firms and backed by Innovate UK has entered the live testing phase