Cybersecurity news
6 Trends Shaping Cybersecurity in 2021
Sourced from International IDEA Business operations have changed beyond recognition with most employees working from home in a transition that happened almost overnight. Stretched security teams have been challenged to rapidly deploy robust remote working facilities to maintain productivity while others were writing the ‘pandemic playbook’ as they went along. With this in mind, here are six trends to expect in 2021: 1. Remote-working focuses attacker attention on mobile compromise As business becomes more mobile than ever and remote working persists, mobile devices and operating systems will be increasingly targeted. In 2021, more employees will use personal devices to review and share sensitive corporate information, these become an excellent point of ingress for attackers. 2. Continuing ...
Top 10 Suspicious Email Subject Lines
Phishing emails related to working from home are on the rise, according to the latest report from KnowBe4. Social media messages are another area of concern when it comes to phishing, and LinkedIn phishing messages dominate as the top social media email subject to watch out for, holding the number one spot at 47%. “It’s no surprise that phishing attacks related to working from home are increasing given that many countries around the world have seen their employees working from home offices for nearly a year now,” says Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4. “Just because employees may be more used to their home office environment doesn’t mean that they can let their guard down. The bad guys deploy manipulative attacks intended to strike certain emotions to cause end-users to skip critical thinking...
Networks Unlimited Africa Embraces the Power of Three with its Value Offering to Partners
Anton Jacobsz, Networks Unlimited CEO There is a mysterious alchemy about the number three. As the saying goes, ‘Good things come in threes’ – which is why Networks Unlimited Africa is embracing this ‘magic number’. “A triangle, with its three sides, is one of the most stable shapes that you will find, which is why it’s used in building bridges and other structures where supporting a lot of weight is required,” says Anton Jacobsz, CEO at this leading value-added distributor in the sub-Saharan Africa market. “In the world of colour, we find three primary colours that make up all the rest – red, yellow and blue. In sport, we invariably award medals to the top three competitors, while in photography and design, artists often work in the rule of thirds for perspective. And so here ...
Security Flaw in Health Startup Exposed User Accounts and Medical Information
Sourced from LogBox. LogBox, a South African medical data startup that claims it is an “absolutely secure” way to replace paper forms and documentation in sharing patient data with doctors, has exposed user accounts and sensitive patient data following a lapse in security. Anurag Sen, a security researcher, found an exposed database belonging to the company. The database contained account access tokens for thousands of LogBox users, which if used would grant full access to the accounts and the information therein of users without even needing to input a password. Sen had reported to LogBox that their database has been exposed, but did not hear back. TechCrunch writes that the database has been pulled offline as soon as it reached out. LogBox’ database leak comes just as the country’s new d...
South African Organisations Lag Behind Global Average of Cybersecurity Resilience
Email and data security company, Mimecast, unveiled its fourth-annual State of Email Security 2020 report. This report summarises details from 1,025 global IT decision-makers on the current state of cybersecurity. The findings in this year’s report demonstrate that despite high levels of confidence in respondents’ cyber resilience strategies, there is a clear need for improvement. While a large majority (77%) of respondents say they have or are actively rolling out a cyber resilience strategy, only 62% of South African organisations are doing the same. Yet an astounding 47% of local organisations – and 60% of global ones – believe it is inevitable or likely they will suffer from an email-borne attack in the coming year. South African respondents cite data loss (35%), a decrease in employee...
Sony is Offering a $50,000 Reward for Hacking the PlayStation 4
Sourced from Bloomberg Sony has launched a bug bounty hunting reward programme in order to continue to find critical faults with the security of its PlayStation 4 console and the PlayStation Network. Participants in the programme who find exploits and loopholes in the console’s security could be rewarded up to $50,000. This announcement was made by Sony Interactive Entertainment Senior Director of Software Engineering Geoff Norton, who says the company has partnered with a bug bounty platform, HackerOne, for the programme. “At PlayStation, we are committed to providing gamers all over the world with great experiences. I’m happy to announce today that we have started a public PlayStation Bug Bounty programme because the security of our products is a fundamental part of creating amazing expe...
Hybrid Cloud Environments Provide Cheap Security for Financial Service Organisations
Sourced from ZDNet. Worldwide, financial services organisations are turning to the cloud as the means to transform outdated legacy systems and commit to disruptive technologies. The size of the public cloud market is expected to top $354 billion by the end of 2022, a significant jump from the less than $197 billion of 2018. But instead of going the all-or-nothing route, the hybrid cloud is positioned to provide companies with a more secure way of leveraging their data. Yunus Scheepers, CTO at SilverBridge, discusses these security benefits at a time when Microsoft Azure data centres in the country are attracting attention from financial services organisations as a safer alternative to what their current on-premise offerings can provide. A hybrid cloud environment also provides risk-averse ...
New “Wormable” Bug Discovered in Windows 10
Sourced from Travellers Windows 10 users have been urged once again to ensure that their systems are updated and properly protected with the latest security patches following the discovery of a dangerous new vulnerability. This comes via Tech Radar. This new warning emanates from US Homeland Security, whose cybersecurity advisory unit has discovered an exploit code for a wormable bug online. The Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is now urging all Windows 10 users to patch and update their systems immediately to ensure they stay safe from the vulnerability. The bug itself was discovered in a GitHub post. An exploit that targets a known security flaw in the server message block tool that allows Windows to communicate with other devices, including appli...
Use of Cloud Collaboration Tools Surge Across the World and So Do Attacks
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed companies to adapt to new government-mandated restrictions on workforce movement around the world. The immediate response has been a rapid adoption and integration of cloud services, particularly cloud-based tools such as Microsoft Office 365, Slack and other video conferencing platforms like Zoom. A new report by security firm McAfee shows that hackers are responding to this mass migration to these platforms with an increased focus on abusing cloud account credentials. After analyzing cloud usage data that was collected between January and April, from over 30-million enterprise users of its MVISION cloud security monitoring platform, the company estimates a 50% growth in adoption of cloud services across all industries. Some industries, however, saw a much...
Hackers Release New Jailbreak that Unlocks Every iPhone
Sourced from Macworld. A renowned iPhone hacking team has released a new ‘Jailbreak’ tool that unlocks every iPhone, even the most recent models running the latest iOS 13.5. For as long as Apple has kept up its walled garden approach to iPhones by only allowing apps and customization that it approves, hackers have tried to break free from what they call the “jail” – hence the term “Jailbreak.” This allows customising their phones as they see fit. Load whatever apps they want, even change things like issues with iPhone batteries. Hackers do this by finding a previously undisclosed vulnerability in iOS that break through some of the many restrictions that Apple puts in place to prevent access to the underlying software. Apple says it does this for security. But jailbreakers say breaking thro...
