Financial fraud remains the leading driver of cyber insurance claims. 83% of cases are traced back to email-based attacks. While most of the common tactics used to deceive employees have remained the same, including wiring funds to fraudulent accounts, executive and vendor impersonation and business email compromise scams, generative AI-crafted emails are on the rise as a threat. These findings reflect broad fraud trends. According to the...

There are a number of trends that impact IT security that accelerated through 2024 and are promising to grow as threats in 2025. Some of these trends are enabled or accelerated by emerging technologies like widespread AI and others are so old that their recent uptick is surprising.   AI-enabled Scams/Social Engineering The rise of AI-enabled scams and fraud is predictable, in many cases just creating a more believable layer to classic...

HHS OIG: Current Audit Program Is Not Pushing Entities Enough to Improve Cyber The Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General just finished a report making a series of suggestions to the Office for Civil Rights regarding the focus and implementation of HIPAA audits in the near future. The audit program has been dormant since 2020, but the HHS is restarting the program and toughening the scope of its audits. The HHS...

Advisory Warns of Iranian Threat Actors Iranian cyber actors are using brute force techniques like password spraying and multifactor authentication “push bombing” to attack global critical infrastructure sectors, according to a recent joint advisory. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published a cybersecurity advisory with the FBI, NSA and cyber authorities in Canada and Australia warning of an increasing threat...

What do you do when a service or platform that your organization relies on goes down? The recent chaos caused by problems with CDK and Crowdstrike highlights the need to be mindful of risks caused by 3rd party vendors. It’s also a reminder as to why having a contingency plan in place before an outage or attack occurs is key to any organization’s response. Both issues stemmed from different root causes. In CDK’s case, a ransomware attack left...

Microsoft announced in December that Windows 10 will reach end of support in October 2025. Those who rely on the operating system will no longer receive essential security updates, bug fixes or technical support unless they migrate to Windows 11 and they sign up for escalating maintenance fees. The Extended Security Update program for devices running Windows 10 enables enterprises to continue receiving monthly security updates by paying $61 per...

Russian Cyber Sabotage Unit Sandworm Adopting Advanced Techniques Mandiant newly designated the Russian military intelligence hacking team known as Sandworm as APT44. Russia’s preeminent cyber sabotage unit presents “one of the widest and high severity cyber threats globally” due to its advanced capabilities and successes in disrupting global critical infrastructure sectors, a new report warns. Sandworm is the cyberwarfare...

As U.S. federal regulators fine-tune a strategy to push the healthcare sector into strengthening its cybersecurity posture, they are revisiting a HIPAA compliance audit program that’s been dormant since 2017. A new round of HIPAA audits for regulated entities is in the works. The Department of Health and Human Services recently published a notice saying that its Office for Civil Rights would be pulling the trigger soon on a study to assess...

GoldPickaxe Malware Can Record User’s Face, Gather Video Used in Deepfake Crimes A Chinese-speaking cybercrime group, identified as GoldFactory, is expanding the functionality and reach of its advanced banking Trojans. These Trojans are now collecting and stealing biometric data. Cybersecurity firm Group-IB recently released a report saying that GoldFactory has developed a new Trojan, dubbed GoldPickaxe, that comes in Android and iOS variants...

‘Essential’ and ‘Enhanced’ Best Practices Will Influence Upcoming Rule-Making The Department of Health and Human Services has released guidance that spells out voluntary cybersecurity performance goals for the healthcare sector. The new 13-page Cybersecurity Performance Goals document, recently released by HHS’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, details both essential goals “to outline...

We hope that you had a successful 2023. Looking back, 2023 saw a number of high-profile breaches as criminals and nation-state-supported hackers both created new methods of attacking and took advantage of existing vulnerabilities. Looking to 2024, here are a few things that we think are worth keeping an eye on moving forward. Phishing NOW WITH AI Phishing continues to be a persistent and lucrative attack vector for criminals and state-...

Beware of Phishing and Social Engineering Attacks Targeting Passwords, Vendor Warns Okta, the identity and authentication giant, said the attacker behind its September data breach stole more information than it first discovered. That includes details for all users of its primary customer support system. They first publicly confirmed the breach on Nov. 3, warning that attackers had gained access to its customer support management system and...

Massachusetts Management Firm to Pay $100,000, Monitor HIPAA Compliance for 3 Years A Massachusetts-based medical management firm holds the dubious honor of being the first ransomware victim fined for a data breach by the Department of Health and Human Services. Doctor Management Group agreed to a $100,000 financial settlement and three years of HIPAA compliance monitoring and corrective actions following an investigation into a 2019 ransomware...

Cybercrime is an ever-evolving field. Technology evolves to allow new tactics or new scales for criminals, as well as giving firms new tools to combat fraud and theft. Due to the fact that it’s ever-evolving, sometimes it can be difficult to see vast changes that occur over time. Over the last 5 years, there have been significant changes to the landscape of cybercrime. Not just in the increases in scale but also significant changes in the types...

More Hacks Compromising Protected Health Info Being Reported to Regulators Healthcare organizations are adding millions to the tally of individuals affected by the Memorial Day weekend hack of the MOVEit file transfer application by Russian-speaking hackers. In recent days, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights has posted several more reports submitted by entities involving MOVEit breaches. An estimated...

Fraud, Security, Implementation Hurdles With Fast Payment Program The new FedNow service has been hyped as a way to revolutionize the U.S. approach to payments, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s perception as a stable payments network provider and its access to a built-in customer base of thousands of national, regional and community financial institutions. The large volume of banks with access to an instant payments network may lead to a...

How GPT’s Evil Twin Could Be Used in BEC Attacks A black hat AI tool called Worm GPT is being used to improve the efficacy of phishing emails. This is particularly troubling because a recent survey shows that 1 in 5 people fall for the fake, AI-generated emails, according to cybersecurity researchers. Researchers at SlashNext recently assessed WormGPT, an evil twin of OpenAI’s GPT AI model designed specifically for malicious...

Latest Breach Affects 234,000 Individuals; Involves Recent MCNA Insurance Co. Hack The state government of Iowa reported to federal regulators a third major health data breach since April involving a third-party vendor. The breach stems from an incident at dental health insurer MCNA Insurance Co. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services reported hackers had compromised the protected health information of nearly 234,000 Iowa residents in...

Check fraud increased 84% between 2021 and 2022, to 680,000 reported cases, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Part of this growth stems from the fact that check fraud has become easier and more accessible. Cybercrime groups are openly hawking fraudulent check schemes on the Telegram messaging app. Check fraud started rising during the COVID-19 pandemic partially due to stimulus programs. Criminals made easy money by stealing...

A third-party security study commissioned by Duo Security/Cisco highlights the five most-impactful security activities for an organization. This study builds on one that was previously commissioned in 2020. Broadly speaking, the study focuses on two key security areas: prevention and response. For prevention, the two most impactful areas were having a current tech stack, and having that tech stack integrated with your security systems. They...