Patrick Howell O’Neill reports: Just 48 hours after banks and government websites crashed in Ukraine under the weight of a concerted cyberattack on February 15 and 16, the United States pointed the finger at Russian spies. Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said that the US has…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Grand Junction man negotiates with ransomware ‘bad guys’
Tom Hesse reports: Eastern Europe can be perilous if you have the kind of job Kurtis Minder has. It’s a line of work featuring regular correspondence with the FBI and familiarity with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control Sanctions list. Minder operates in the sprawling world of cybersecurity, drawing interest for his…
Sea Mar Community Health Centers Hit with Class Action Suits Over 2021 Data Breach
Kendal Enz reports: Sea Mar Community Health Centers is facing numerous class action complaints for alleged inadequate cyber security procedures that resulted in a data breach of more than 650,000 class members’ sensitive information. The complaints, which were filed in November 2021 in King County Superior Court, were removed to Washington’s Western District Court this…
Only 3% of consumers freeze credit after data breach
Here’s a statistic I haven’t seen before. Rachel DePompa reports: According to a new study by the Identity Theft Resource Center, Americans know about credit freezes but rarely use them. The research was published by the nonprofit DIG.Works. It found only 3% of surveyed consumers actually froze their credit after receiving a data breach notice….
2021 Saw Sharp Increase in Ransomware Data Leaks and Ransom Demands
HIPAA Journal has a piece highlighting some findings from Crowdstrike’s 2021 report. It begins: CrowdStrike has released its annual threat report which shows there was a major increase in data leaks following ransomware attacks in 2021, rising 82% from 2020. CrowdStrike observed 2,686 ransomware attacks in 2021 compared to 1,474 in 2020. There were more…
This site’s new “No help for you” policy
From the “Yes-I’m-grumpy-but-you-earned-it Department:” Over the years, mainstream journalists have reached out to me for information related to breach stories they were developing, and I generally tried to help them. In some cases, that might involve a few phone calls. In other cases, it might be an hour or more of my time on the…