Supply chain functions are moving towards automation and integration. For instance, take the use of cloud computing, robotics and artificial intelligence in improving productivity and customer service. In fact, not a single day goes by when we don’t come across headlines about the shipping and logistics industry, like Clearpath or DHL, developing...

Reckitt Benckiser, the household goods manufacturer of such famous products as Nurofen painkillers, Durex condoms, Dettol, and Harpic, has warned that it was hit hard by the June 27th global malware outbreak which struck power plants, airports, and government agencies in Ukraine before spreading to other multinational firms. In a sales warning for...

With millions of small businesses out there, why don’t they care about cyber security? You may be reading this and own a small business or know someone that does. Think to yourself: why would small businesses not care about cyber security? You may find that it is not a problem of caring but a problem of understanding. Let’s take a look at some of...

When it seemed that ransomware authors hit the lowest of the low with their attacks a long time ago, they managed to take it a notch further last month. With the revamped Petya Trojan that surfaced on June 27, the crooks broke new ground and started waging a real cyber war against a particular country. This toxic code renders computers inoperable,...

The Blank Slate attack campaign is pushing out one of two ransomware to unsuspecting Windows users via Microsoft-themed malspam. An attack begins when a user receives a malicious spam ("malspam") email message. As in previous instances of Blank Slate, the email's subject line doesn't give away the attack. It incorporates seemingly random numbers and...

Security concerns at firms continue to increase. It’s estimated that the cost of a single data breach is $4 million. Analysts estimate that cyber security attacks have caused the value of shares of publicly traded companies to drop by over $52 billion. The losses incurred by firms are only going into grow. Increasingly, bad actors are focusing on...

In part 1 of this series about the proposed regulation promulgated by the New York State Department of Financial Services, the evolution of some of the administrative requirements were explored. The exemptions, appointment of a CISO and the utilization of cyber security personnel all changed from the originally proposed regulation. In this part,...

The New York State Department of Financial Services has proposed a cyber security regulation that is unique in its breadth. The original proposed regulation underwent a 45-day review period, after which it was changed. It is currently under another 45-day review period pending further changes and should be published in the next few weeks. The...

In their ever-increasing aggressiveness to wring even more money out of victims, it's perhaps no surprise to see some online extortionists creating ransomware targeted against affluent Mac users. The latest example of Mac ransomware, OSX/Filecoder.E, has been discovered by malware analysts at ESET after it was distributed via BitTorrent distribution...

BSides is known for its collaborative and welcoming environment – something that truly sets it apart from the many other security conferences that are held these days. Today, the conference series has spread all across the world, yet its mission remains the same: to provide an open forum for infosec discussion and debate. Tony Martin-Vegue, a...

What is GDPR, when is it coming, and what steps should you take to comply?If you’ve been following the information security news or Twitter feeds, then you’ve no doubt seen the increase in traffic around the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). And there’s a good chance you’ve been ignoring it, as well. It’s time to pay attention, for GDPR is...

Scammers want nothing more than to steal our personal and/or financial information. Towards that end, they've come up numerous ways of tricking us into giving them our details. One particularly persistent method is the Grandma scam. Unlike email-based ploys, the Grandma scam centers around a fraudster who rings up an older individual. They pose as...

Yahoo is warning more of its users that their accounts might have been accessed by unauthorised parties. Yahoo believes that hackers managed to break into its internal systems, and used the proprietary code they accessed to forge cookies that would allow attackers to access accounts without needing a password. It goes without saying that the ability...

In my ongoing blog series “Hacker Mindset,” I explore an attacker’s assumptions, methods, and theories, including how information security professionals can apply this knowledge to increase cybervigilance on the systems and networks they steward. In this article, I explore the intense debate surrounding encryption and what it means for policy makers...

Ever since the first large-scale ransomware attacks started targeting individual users, companies, and government institutions, we have witnessed that the primary malicious actor is usually a hacker or a hacker collective. More and more victims are now browsing the web looking for a way to get rid of the threat by not paying the ransom sum, a trend...

Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc., has confirmed that a breach affected payment systems at its corporate restaurant locations. Information security investigative journalist Brian Krebs first learned something was up when several banks and credit unions reached out to him inquiring if he had heard of an incident involving Arby's. He subsequently reached...

If you've got an email account or social media profile, it's likely you've come across phishing of some kind before. In a sentence, phishing is the fraudulent attempt to steal personal information by social engineering: the act of criminal deception. Verizon's latest Data Breach Investigations Report notes that "social engineering remains worryingly...

Shamoon v2 is a tenacious piece of malware that recently participated in attacks against 15 Saudi government agencies and private companies. Shamoon compromises hard drives and leaves them completely erased and inoperable. It first appeared in 2012 when it targeted one Saudi company, an assault which today is widely recognized as one of the most...

In the United States, there is a basic rule of thumb that at some point after a block of metal undergoes a certain amount of manufacturing, it becomes a rifle. When approximately 80 percent of the manufacturing is complete, the metal is not a weapon; at 81 percent, it is. A weapon is dangerous; it is often regulated, and more often than not, it has...

With analyst group Gartner valuing the annual global spending on educational technology at over £17 billion ($21 billion USD) in 2015, there's no doubt that technology implementation is shaping the future of education systems. The appropriate integration of technology guides students, teachers, and administrators towards clarity and extensibility....