159 Major Breaches in 2021 About 70 major health data breaches have been added to the federal tally in the last four weeks as ransomware attacks have persisted and breaches at vendors have affected clients. As of Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ HIPAA Breach Reporting Tool website showed 159 breaches affecting a combined total of 12.5 million individuals have been added to the tally so far this year. That’s up...

The Treasury Department’s OCC, Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC are proposing rule changes that would dramatically increase the reporting requirements for banks that experience a “computer security incident”. While the time for public comment has passed and the rule changes are not final yet, here is the sum-mary of what is being proposed. “The OCC, Board, and FDIC (together, the agencies) invite comment on a notice of proposed rule-making...

With people working from home and many companies planning on making some level of remote work permanent, it’s important for banks and other data-heavy industries to reconsider how their network security is implemented. That’s where Zero Trust comes in. Zero Trust has become one of cybersecurity’s latest buzzwords. But it’s not just a buzzword. For industries where security is of paramount importance, it’s imperative to understand what Zero...

A ransomware gang has hit a Seattle-based billing and payment processing provider. This highlights how criminals are both attacking businesses and also stealing and selling valuable personal information, regardless of whether or not the ransom is paid. Gangs are increasingly targeting service businesses with access to customers’ financial information. The ‘Cuba’ ransomware gang has taken credit for the hit against Automatic...

Business Associate Breaches Affect Millions Nearly 1/3 of the major health data breaches added to the federal tally so far this year involve business associates, continuing a trend in recent years. A recent analysis by CI Security found that in the second half of 2020, nearly 75% of all records breached were tied to security incidents involving business associates. Currently, the HHS OCR website shows that 37 major breaches, affecting more than...

  Bureau and Security Experts Warn About Gang’s Effective Extortion Model   The FBI issued a warning this week over the growing threat from the operators behind the Egregor ransomware variant and other cybercriminal gangs affiliated with the group. Since September, the Egregor gang and its affiliates claim to have compromised approximately 150 corporate networks in the U.S. and other countries. In some cases, the extortion...

New Egregor ransomware has been gaining traction since emerging in September. A new form of ransomware is becoming increasingly prolific as cybercriminals turn to it as a preferred means of encrypting vulnerable networks in an effort to exploit bitcoin from victims. Egregor ransomware first emerged in September but has already become notorious following several high-profile incidents, including attacks against Barnes & Noble and video game...

From Ransomware and DDoS to Malware and SIM Swapping: Europol Describes Latest Threats According to the seventh annual Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment, produced by Europol ransomware attacks remain the top cyber-enabled threat. But phishing, business email compromises and other types of fraud – many now using a COVID-19 theme – also loom large. Here are 10 of the top threats from the Europol report in alphabetical order....

Microsoft’s Security Intelligence team is warning users of the Office 365 suite about an ongoing phishing campaign that appears to be harvesting victims’ credentials. The phishing emails, which are currently circulating, use several techniques to bypass and evade secure email gateways. The criminals use social engineering techniques and timely subject lines relevant to remote work, like password updates, conferencing info, and...

Researchers: Hackers May Have Used Magento Zero-Day Exploit In the largest automated hacking campaign since at least 2015, from September 11-14, malicious JavaScript skimming code was injected into nearly 2,000 e-commerce sites that were running an older version of Adobe’s Magento software, possibly resulting in the theft of payment card data. It was the largest automated campaign on record, surpassing a breach in July 2019 that hacked...