News

Security policy and user awareness

• July 22, 2024 22 Jul'24

  NCA cracks digitalstress DDoS-for-hire operation

  The UK authorities have taken down a major component of the multinational DDoS cyber attack-for-hire ecosystem, hacking into the digitalstress.su service and exfiltrating data on its users, who now face arrest

• July 22, 2024 22 Jul'24

  NCSC: Beware of criminal CrowdStrike opportunists

  Financially motivated cyber criminals are already conducting opportunistic attacks on organisations that leverage the CrowdStrike incident, and more targeted attacks are sure to follow

• July 18, 2024 18 Jul'24

  Growth in nude image sharing heightens cyber abuse risk

  The normalisation of sharing self-created intimate content with others is putting great numbers of people at risk of online abuse, says Kaspersky

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  UK Cyber Bill teases mandatory ransomware reporting

  In the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill introduced in the King's Speech, the UK's new government pledges to give regulators more teeth to ensure compliance with security best practice and to mandate incident reporting

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  Hackney Council reprimanded over 2020 ransomware attack

  The London Borough of Hackney has been reprimanded by the ICO over a series of failures that led to a devastating cyber attack, but at the same time, the regulator praised the local authority for its response and commitment to making improvements

• July 16, 2024 16 Jul'24

  Strategic Defence Review must emphasise cyber security, says industry

  Cyber security leaders say the new government's Strategic Defence Review needs to put digital security front and centre

• July 12, 2024 12 Jul'24

  AT&T loses ‘nearly all’ phone records in Snowflake breach

  Hackers have stolen records of virtually every call made by AT&T's customers during a six-month period in 2022, after compromising the US telco's Snowflake data environment

• July 12, 2024 12 Jul'24

  Public awareness of ID security grows, but big obstacles remain

  Consumers are improving their awareness of the issues around digital identity security, but there are still some big issues preventing many from doing better, according to an Okta report

• July 11, 2024 11 Jul'24

  Dutch research firm TNO pictures the SOC of the future

  In only a few years, security operations centres will have a different design and layout, and far fewer will remain

• July 11, 2024 11 Jul'24

  Inside Israel’s cyber security operations

  An emergency phone line allows cyber security analysts at the Israel Computer Emergency Response Team to map threats against national infrastructure

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Hyper-V zero-day stands out on a busy Patch Tuesday

  Microsoft has fixed almost 140 vulnerabilities in its latest monthly update, with a Hyper-V zero-day singled out for urgent attention

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Chinese spies target vulnerable home office kit to run cyber attacks

  China’s APT40 is ramping up targeting of victims using vulnerable small and home office networking kit as command and control infrastructure, according to an international alert

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Lessons from war: How Israel is fighting Iranian state-backed hacking

  The general director of the Israel National Cyber Directorate talks about the rise in cyber attacks and what lessons the country has gleaned to defend against hacking from foreign parties

• July 08, 2024 08 Jul'24

  Synnovis attack highlights degraded, outdated state of NHS IT

  More cyber attacks against the health service are likely, and will succeed if something isn’t done to address the increasingly elderly NHS IT estate, experts are warning

• July 03, 2024 03 Jul'24

  NCA’s Operation Morpheus targets illicit Cobalt Strike use

  International law enforcement operation targets cyber criminals using the Cobalt Strike penetration testing framework for dodgy purposes

• June 28, 2024 28 Jun'24

  How Recorded Future is operationalising threat intelligence

  Recorded Future is investing in APIs to enable automated security workflows, among other measures, to help organisations overcome the hurdles of operationalising threat intelligence

• June 21, 2024 21 Jun'24

  Sellafield whistleblower ordered to pay costs after email tampering claims

  A former consultant at Sellafield has been ordered to pay costs for having ‘acted unreasonably’ in claiming the nuclear facility tampered with metadata in letters used against her in court

• June 21, 2024 21 Jun'24

  Qilin ransomware gang publishes stolen NHS data online

  The ransomware gang behind a major cyber attack on NHS supplier Synnovis has published a 400GB trove of private healthcare data online

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  Black Basta ransomware crew may be exploiting Microsoft zero-day

  A Microsoft vulnerability that was addressed without fanfare in March may in fact have been exploited as a zero-day by the notorious Black Basta ransomware gang, threat hunters warn

• June 12, 2024 12 Jun'24

  RCE flaw and DNS zero-day top list of Patch Tuesday bugs

  An RCE vulnerability in a Microsoft messaging feature and a third-party flaw in a DNS authentication protocol are the most pressing issues to address in Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday

• June 11, 2024 11 Jun'24

  Pure Storage hit by Snowflake credential hackers

  Pure Storage emerges as the latest victim of a fast-spreading breach of Snowflake customers targeting users with lax credential security measures in place

• June 11, 2024 11 Jun'24

  More than 160 Snowflake customers hit in targeted data theft spree

  Mandiant reports that more than 160 Snowflake customers have been hit in a broad data theft and extortion campaign targeting organisations that have failed to pay proper attention to securing valuable credentials

• June 07, 2024 07 Jun'24

  DDoS gang threatens to disrupt European elections

  Russian hacktivists are threatening to disrupt the European Parliament elections, while the BBC reports on new deepfake threats to the UK’s electoral process

• June 07, 2024 07 Jun'24

  Sophos uncovers Chinese state-sponsored campaign in Southeast Asia

  Sophos found three distinct clusters of activity targeted at a high-level government organisation that appeared to be tied to Chinese interests in the South China Sea

• June 06, 2024 06 Jun'24

  FBI finds 7,000 LockBit decryption keys in blow to criminal gang

  The US authorities say they now have more than 7,000 LockBit decryption keys in their possession and are urging victims of the prolific ransomware gang to come forward

• June 04, 2024 04 Jun'24

  OAIC files civil penalty action against Medibank

  The OAIC alleges that Medibank failed to take reasonable steps to protect the personal information of 9.7 million Australians in the October 2022 data breach

• June 04, 2024 04 Jun'24

  Russia used fake AI Tom Cruise in Olympic disinformation campaign

  Microsoft threat researchers report a surge in Russian disinformation campaigns targeting the 2024 Summer Olympics, including AI-enhanced propaganda

• June 03, 2024 03 Jun'24

  97 FTSE 100 firms exposed to supply chain breaches

  Between March 2023 and March 2024, 97 out of 100 companies on the UK’s FTSE 100 list were put at risk of compromise following supply chain breaches at third-party suppliers

• May 29, 2024 29 May'24

  Proofpoint exposes AFF scammers’ piano gambit

  Ransomware and nation state actors dominate the headlines, but fraud and scams still net career cyber criminals thousands from unsuspecting members of the public. Proofpoint reports on a campaign targeting victims of a musical inclination

• May 29, 2024 29 May'24

  Organisations value digital trust, but aren’t working at it

  Three quarters of organisations believe digital trust is relevant to their businesses, yet clear gaps in strategies still seem to persist

• May 28, 2024 28 May'24

  Executive Interview: Why Dell wants to be your one-stop AI shop

  At Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, artificial intelligence was the talk of the town as Dell staked out an all-encompassing strategy ahead of an anticipated goldrush. Dell’s Nick Brackney explains why the tech giant believes it's onto a winner

• May 23, 2024 23 May'24

  Northern Ireland police face £750,000 fine after data protection blunder put lives at risks

  Information commissioner John Edwards uses discretion to reduce proposed fine from £5.6m to £750,000

• May 22, 2024 22 May'24

  Rockwell urges users to disconnect ICS equipment

  ICS systems maker Rockwell Automation calls on users to take steps to secure their equipment, and reminds them there is no reason to ever have its hardware connected to the public internet, as it tracks an increase in global threat activity

• May 21, 2024 21 May'24

  Parliamentary committee criticises big tech response to election threats

  Parliamentary committee says tech companies ‘regurgitated publicly available content’ and failed to address questions raised by MPs and peers

• May 21, 2024 21 May'24

  The Security Interviews: What is the real cyber threat from China?

  Former NCSC boss Ciaran Martin talks about nation-state attacks, why the UK has become so exercised about cyber espionage, and how our leaders are in danger of misunderstanding their adversaries

• May 17, 2024 17 May'24

  Why the UK needs to fix its broken IT security market

  Ollie Whitehouse, CTO of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, says the market for secure software is broken. Are new laws required to make software companies liable for poor security?

• May 15, 2024 15 May'24

  GCHQ to protect politicians and election candidates from cyber attacks

  The National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, to protect election candidates from hostile state cyber attacks

• May 15, 2024 15 May'24

  Cyber Safety Force wants to change conversation around risk

  A consortium to help cyber pros better manage risk has launched, with ambitious goals to change the nature of the conversation from cyber security to cyber safety

• May 15, 2024 15 May'24

  Critical SharePoint, Qakbot-linked flaws focus of May Patch Tuesday

  A critical SharePoint vulnerability warrants attention this month, but it is another flaw that seems to be linked to the infamous Qakbot malware that is drawing attention

• May 14, 2024 14 May'24

  China poses genuine and increasing cyber security risk to UK, says GCHQ director

  GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler uses her first major public speech to warn that China poses a significant cyber security threat to the UK

• May 10, 2024 10 May'24

  Major breach of customer information developing at Dell

  Almost 50 million data records relating to Dell customers appear to have been compromised in a major cyber breach

• May 09, 2024 09 May'24

  Cyber attack victims need to speak up, says ICO

  The Information Commissioner’s Office is urging organisations to be transparent and learn from each other’s mistakes as it reveals most of the cyber attacks it responds to stem from the same core errors

• May 06, 2024 06 May'24

  Microsoft beefs up cyber initiative after hard-hitting US report

  Microsoft is expanding its recently launched Secure Future Initiative in the wake of a hard-hitting US government report on recent nation state intrusions into its systems

• May 03, 2024 03 May'24

  Why IAM is central to cyber security

  BeyondTrust’s chief security strategist talks up the importance of identity and access management, and the role of cyber insurance in driving security improvements

• May 02, 2024 02 May'24

  NCSC updates warning over hacktivist threat to CNI

  The NCSC and CISA have warned about the evolving threat from Russia-backed hacktivist threat actors targeting critical national infrastructure, after a number of American utilities were attacked

• May 01, 2024 01 May'24

  EMEA CISOs must address human factors behind cyber incidents

  The 17th annual Verizon report on data breaches makes for sobering reading for security pros, urging them to do more to address the human factors involved in cyber incidents, and highlighting ongoing issues with zero-day patching

• May 01, 2024 01 May'24

  Secure coding benchmark to increase standards among developers

  Developer security advocate Secure Code Warrior has launched what it claims is the industry’s first benchmark designed to quantify the security competence of its customers’ software developer teams

• April 30, 2024 30 Apr'24

  Persistent data breaches deny people with HIV dignity and privacy

  The ICO has urged charities and healthcare organisations that work with people living with HIV to do better when it comes to protecting their personal data, after the HIV status of more than 100 people was accidentally disclosed by London’s Central ...

• April 29, 2024 29 Apr'24

  UK’s long-awaited device security law kicks in

  The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act has become law across the UK, enforcing basic cyber security standards across connected products sold to the public

• April 25, 2024 25 Apr'24

  Progress being made on gender diversity in cyber

  Women make up a higher percentage of new entrants to the cyber security profession, particularly among younger age groups, and are increasingly taking up leadership positions and hiring roles, but challenges still persist