Data Governance Is at the Core of GDPR Compliance Organizations have until May 25, 2018, to comply with the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Arguably the most comprehensive, far-reaching data privacy law passed to date, the GDPR grants European consumers numerous new data privacy rights and places new data governance responsibilities on organizations.… Read More
Forever 21 Breach Disclosed on the Cusp of the Holiday Shopping Season Clothing retailer Forever 21 suffered a POS system breach in an undisclosed number of stores from March to October 2017, the company announced last week. The Forever 21 breach was discovered by a third party and involved hackers taking advantage of POS systems… Read More
Social Media Security Matters: Just Look at the Trump Twitter Account Debacle The recent Trump Twitter account incident – where the president’s Twitter feed was deactivated for 11 minutes – was fodder for many late-night television jokes. All kidding aside, though, enterprise social media security is serious business. A social media presence is an integral… Read More
FISMA vs. FedRAMP and NIST: Making Sense of Government Compliance Standards FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST, DFARS, CJIS, HIPAA … Government compliance standards can seem like a veritable alphabet soup. Making matters even worse, a lot of them overlap, and many organizations aren’t certain which standards they need to comply with. Even if your organization does not… Read More
FedRAMP Certification Can Help Grow Your Cloud Service Business The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) was designed to support the federal government’s “cloud-first” initiative by making it easier for federal agencies to contract with cloud providers. Like FISMA, DFARS, CJIS, and HIPAA, FedRAMP’s security controls are based on NIST 800-53. If your cloud… Read More
Don’t want your company to be the next Yahoo, Equifax, Deloitte, or SEC? Don’t ignore cyber risk management. October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month in the U.S., which is quite fitting right now, being as barely a day is going by without yet another disclosure of a massive hack, and Americans are far more… Read More
The SEC, NFA hack has pitched the international finance world into turmoil as Wall Street’s top regulator admits to not having secured its own systems. Move over, Equifax; the SEC, NFA hack may have just stolen your thunder. Less than two weeks after Equifax disclosed that it had been breached, compromising the personal information of… Read More
The Equifax breach isn’t the largest data breach, but it is one of the most troubling because of its massive scope, the nature of the information stolen, and the absolutely awful way in which it has been handled. While Hurricane Irma dominated the national news late last week, a man-made disaster unfolded in the background… Read More
Hacks in the City: Latest in String of HBO Hacks Targets Company’s Social Media Accounts HBO has had a rough summer, and things are getting progressively worse for the cable titan. The HBO hacks began in late June, when an individual hacker or group calling themselves “Mr. Smith” dumped several episodes of upcoming HBO series… Read More
HBO has had a rough summer, and things are getting progressively worse for the cable titan. The HBO hacks began in late June, when an individual hacker or group calling themselves “Mr. Smith” dumped several episodes of an upcoming HBO series and the script to an upcoming Game of Thrones episode online. Mr. Smith claimed… Read More
HBO Hack Targeted Valuable Intellectual Property and Company Secrets Corporate espionage and the theft of intellectual property and company secrets have gone cyber. The latest victim is cable network HBO and its flagship series Game of Thrones. The HBO hack, perpetrated by a hacker or group calling themselves “Mr. Smith,” may involve as much as… Read More
Anthem – yes, that Anthem – has been hacked again. About a month after the beleaguered health insurer agreed to fork over a record-setting $115 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to its massive 2015 breach, it was breached again, or rather, one of its third-party vendors was. The 2017 Anthem breach involved… Read More
Department of Defense contractors and their subcontractors have until December 31 to obtain DFARS compliance Third-party data breaches are a serious problem, especially when highly sensitive data is involved – and our nation’s infrastructure, including our defense systems, are built and maintained by third-party government contractors. Recognizing this, the U.S. Department of Defense is requiring… Read More
A new report by a cybersecurity firm shows Arizona businesses lead the nation in malware detections. Malwarebytes examined data from its client companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. In the first quarter of this year, Malwarebytes found incidents in Arizona increased 1,332 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. “It’s really malicious software that’s been… Read More
Verizon, Trump Hotels, and the RNC are Among the Recent Victims of Third-Party Breaches Even if your own cyber security is up to snuff, your organization could be at risk of third-party breaches if your business partners are not as diligent as you are. Verizon just learned this lesson the hard way after one of… Read More
The NotPetya attacks weren’t as bad as WannaCry; they were worse, and we all need to start cooperating to prevent the next attack. It’s looking more and more like last week’s NotPetya malware attacks, which infected computers around the world but hit Ukraine particularly hard, were designed to cause widespread damage and disruption, not make… Read More
White-Hat Hackers Are Already Being Caught in the Cryptocurrency Regulation Net Cryptocurrencies have long been associated with cyber crime. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin was the de facto currency of the notorious online black market Silk Road, it remains the preferred payment method on the Dark Net, and the majority of ransomware attacks, including WannaCry, demand payment… Read More
The cybersecurity skills gap is real and growing; there simply aren’t enough cybersecurity employees to go around. Cybercrime is rapidly escalating, and boardrooms are taking notice. KPMG’s 2017 U.S. CEO Outlook survey shows cybersecurity risk to be among CEOs’ top concerns, yet only 40% of them feel that their organizations are fully prepared to handle… Read More
White-Hat Hackers Are Already Being Caught in the Cryptocurrency Regulation Net Cryptocurrencies have long been associated with cyber crime. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin was the de facto currency of the notorious online black market Silk Road, it remains the preferred payment method on the Dark Net, and the majority of ransomware attacks, including WannaCry, demand payment… Read More
Cryptocurrency mining malware may end up being a bigger problem than WannaCry Organizations that think they dodged a bullet when their older systems did not fall prey to the WannaCry ransomware may want to think again. Weeks prior to the WannaCry attacks, a group of hackers was taking advantage of the same Windows vulnerabilities that… Read More
If you are in need of a HIPAA compliant Business Associate Agreement (BAA), we can provide one to you for free. Create an account in the ITAM demonstration system and subscribe to the HIPAA Business Associate Contract. After answering a few simple questions you will be able to immediately download a perfectly prepared HIPAA Business… Read More
The Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Task Force’s report on healthcare cyber security echoes a similar study on medical device security issued by Synopsys and the Ponemon Institute. On the heels of a damning study by Synopsys and the Ponemon Institute, which provides a blow-by-blow accounting of the many problems with medical device security, a federal task… Read More
Four Important Lessons from the WannaCry Ransomware Attacks The recent WannaCry ransomware attacks put cyber security on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Now, everyone knows what ransomware is and how destructive it can be, but will anything change? Following are four critical lessons that both organizations and individuals should take away… Read More
Why Your Employees Keep Clicking on Phishing Emails, and How You Can Stop It The 2017 Verizon Data Breach Report is out, and it’s full of great news – if you’re a hacker. The study, which examined over 1,900 breaches and more than 42,000 attempts in 84 countries, showed that cyberespionage and ransomware are on… Read More