Information systems are not equally safe or vulnerable to cyber attacks. Cyber criminals look for entry points that make it easier to break in, steal data, or do damage to systems. To illustrate, think of a burglary attempt. If an intruder has several houses to choose from, the one with an unlocked door and no security cameras is the easiest and most likely target. The process...

It’s a simple fact: electric vehicles (EVs) are rapidly becoming a prominent fixture of everyday life. Global warming and climate issues are accelerating the adoption of this transportation method running on renewable energy. EVs also feature many technological innovations that make them attractive to buyers. So popular, in fact, that Gartner estimates there will be 2 million...

Your employees are your first line of defense against cyber security attacks. The success or failure of your security awareness program depends on the knowledge of every employee in your organization. As part of your organizational goals and plans for 2023, you must prioritize building a cyber secure and aware culture. This requires an ongoing commitment not just among the...

Cyber security is a constant battle against evolving threats. While most of the themes are the same, it is crucial to remain informed and up to date on the latest forms of every cyber threat. After all, 31% of executives said in a recent survey their main cyber security challenge was improper identification of key risks. Most companies around the globe have a cyber security...

The news from Human Resources is that employees are happier than ever. Working from home using third-party vendor services makes work easier and more flexible. The news from IT is less enthusiastic. A recent report showed that a whopping 98% of organizations have at least one third-party provider that has suffered a data breach in the last two years. Third-party vendor...

All examples of social engineering take advantage of human nature, such as the willingness to trust others, to trick individuals into divulging sensitive information. Despite its prevalence, social engineering can be challenging to distill into a single formula. It’s one of the reasons 82% of data breaches involve the human element. Social engineering has become the backbone of...

Let’s be honest: cyber security employee training has a reputation for being dull. Most employees dread it. They expect dry training talks, lackluster presentations, and examples they can’t relate to. In any training, people must come first. You should create a model that focuses on the people you’re trying to reach: your own employees.  A people-centric approach lets you...

There’s no way to measure your security awareness program’s success unless you identify the behaviors you want to address and develop a clear, actionable strategy. However, many cyber security leaders struggle to create a framework to quantify the success of their security awareness training. As a result, their organizations rely on intuition rather than clearly defined...

The education sector experienced a "record-breaking" year of cyber attacks in 2020. In case you'd been sleeping under a rock, there was a global pandemic that drove up the need for virtual setups. According to Microsoft, education is globally the sector most vulnerable to threats like malware, accounting for more than 6.8 million (over 63%) of total reported encounters in...

Hackers are targeting hundreds of thousands of Google users with fake Google Drive notifications and emails to try and trick them into visiting malicious websites.

As much as we can say that cyber security measures are advancing, we can say the same about cyber criminals and their strategies. In 2022, ransomware attacks occurred every 11 seconds on average, at a global annual cost to businesses and governments of $20 billion US. Costs are rising in part due to the growing ransoms demanded from victims. While estimates of the average...

KrebsOnSecurity blog recently reported on a popular, low-cost Common Access Card (CAC) reader available on Amazon that came with drivers infected by malware. A compromised smart ID card reader can bring severe consequences to both government and private organizations. It gives hackers an easy backdoor means of infiltrating networks and systems, which can leave sensitive...

This financial sector’s reliance on computer systems and network has made it an attractive target for cyber attacks, now the biggest risk to the UK financial system. In its latest Financial Stability Report, the Bank of England (BoE) agrees that cyber threats may be prevalent in 2023. The BoE said that it is working to strengthen defenses against cyber attacks. The report...

If you’re a company that uses email scanning technology as the first line of cyber defense, you should know about a recent slate of malicious Word document-based attacks. These attacks are designed to deliver malware and ransomware to targeted systems. Security researchers at Cisco Talos recently identified an attack where Word document files attached to emails were used to...

There is a sharp rise in cyber attacks targeting businesses and organizations across Australia. The nature of these attacks ranges from ransomware and phishing scams to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, with some estimates suggesting that the number of cyber incidents could be as high as one million per year. The financial cost of these cyber attacks is immense,...

During the annual eCommerce bonanza known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, shopping websites will be swarming with people who are mostly unaware of cyber threats that can leave personal data vulnerable. In 2021, Europe, Canada, and the United States saw a 50% spike in transactions during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday window from the previous week. With the...

The secret of any good security awareness training program is teaching your employees how to mitigate the threats they’re most likely to encounter in the workplace. To do this, you need to choose your security awareness training topics carefully. No two organizations have the same infrastructure, vulnerabilities, or user access policies to sensitive data, so there’s no one...

Restaurant menus worldwide have been replaced by QR codes stuck to the table during the COVID-19 pandemic. Physical menus were judged too difficult to clean and could act as infection vectors. Since everyone has a smartphone nowadays, QR codes were attractive alternatives instead of asking clients to type in the restaurant’s URL on their phones. Before, QR codes were mainly...