News that the US Department of Justice was able to recover approximately $2.3 million of the ransom paid to the DarkSide actors responsible for the attack on Colonial Pipeline felt like poetic justice. It’s likely that JBS is hoping to see a similar outcome since the company paid $11 million to malicious actors in order to recover from a ransomware attack. For more information on the pros and cons of paying a ransom, read How Cryptocurrency Fuels Ransomware so that you can better understand risk response. Additionally, industry experts have weighed in on recent ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure.
Given the high frequency of these cyberattacks, many—including the Better Business Bureau—have warned that a single attack can decimate small businesses. Here are some additional tips to help SMBs protect against ransomware. Ransomware is not new, but the breadth of attacks has elevated awareness of risk. Readers can find a wealth of resources available in our library by visiting www.rsaconference.com/library.
Now let’s take a look at what other industry topics made headlines this week.
June 11: “DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate plans to hold its third annual Biotechnology Rally in September to assess the latest strides in facial recognition,” Federal News Network reported.
June 11: Doing an in-depth review of data as well as creating industry-specific frameworks will help to mitigate the risks of bias in AI technologies, according to Information Week.
June 10: Forbes contributor Bryan Robinson offered five tips on how to protect data from cyberattacks.
June 10: “Within a decade, quantum computers could be powerful enough to break the cryptographic security that protects cell phones, bank accounts, email addresses and — yes — bitcoin wallets,” CNBC reported.
June 9: Infosecurity Magazine reported, “Fastly, a cloud computing services company, experienced a bug on its content delivery network (CDN). This led to several major websites, including Amazon, Reddit, The Guardian and New York Times being forced offline for 30-40 minutes from around 11am. Additionally, specific sections of other services were affected by the failure.”
June 9: Federal law enforcement is investigating a cyberattack on Cox Media Group after multiple systems were downed last week.
June 9: News that Huawei has opened a new transparency center in Dongguan, China, coincided with the company’s announcement of a “security baseline framework” that the Chinese tech vendor says is adopted for its products, outlining requirements for implementation and compliance of legal and regulatory requirements.
June 8: Bloomberg Business reported on a startup called Payward, Inc., highlighting the company not for its cryptocurrency exchange (called Kraken) but for the culture of security it inculcates in its employees. Among other things, “New Payward employees spend two days in security classes, then three days setting up office PCs and passwords.”
June 8: According to news from Europol, “The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Dutch National Police (Politie), and the Swedish Police Authority (Polisen), in cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and 16 other countries have carried out with the support of Europol one of the largest and most sophisticated law enforcement operations to date in the fight against encrypted criminal activities.”
June 7: Last week’s announcement of the forthcoming rollout of Amazon Sidewalk erupted in an outpouring of privacy concerns, but Forbes Senior Contributor Patrick Moorhead said the service is misunderstood.