BusinessInsurance.com reported the comments of Paul Meeusen, head of distributed ledger technology at Swiss Re Ltd. in Zurich that using Blockchain to manage Insurance “seemed very intuitive that this technology was very suitable to some of the key issues we deal with in our industry.” The December 12, 2017 article

Continue Reading Insurance industry embraces Blockchain, but when? Tomorrow or in 10 years?

Unitrends issued a white paper which stated that “the truth is that all industries are vulnerable to ransomware. Email, databases and business applications run on similar infrastructure and operating systems across all industries.”  The white paper was entitled “Beat Ransomware in 5 Easy Steps, Be Prepared to Fight or

Continue Reading Of course, testing is 1 of the 5 easy steps to beat Ransomware!

The New York Times reported that Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (which includes the city of Charlotte) refused to “pay a $23,000 ransom to a group of hackers who seized control of several government computer systems” and the County was operating without “the internet, civil servants were doing their jobs using

Continue Reading Note to Ransomware Criminals – North Carolina Counties will not pay ransom…so go elsewhere!

One might conclude it makes a lot of sense to insure business data after considering Tableau’s report that included Ponemon’s estimate that the “average total cost of a data breach was estimated at $3.62 million.”  The December 2017 report entitled “2018 Top 10 Business Intelligence Trends” included the

Continue Reading Are you kidding me? Only 15% of US companies have insurance for their data!

The New York Times reported that Uber fired it security officer after “two hackers stole data about the company’s riders and drivers — including phone numbers, email addresses and names — from a third-party server and then approached Uber and demanded $100,000 to delete their copy of the data.” The

Continue Reading Uber paid a ransom to hackers who stole 57 million Uber records last year!

On November 29th the US Supreme Court will consider the case of US v. Carpenter where “police acquired the data from Carpenter’s wireless carriers without a warrant showing probable cause”  which led to Timothy Carpenter’s conviction that he was  “leading a gang of robbers” and the “prosecution produced cellphone-tower data

Continue Reading Will the Supreme Court rely on a 1979 case (think 18,134 Internet years) for Internet/cellphone privacy in 2017?

Among a number of recommendations to avoid Spearphishing (aka Business Email Compromise – BEC) the FBI recommends that “employees to use two-factor authentication to access corporate e-mail accounts.” The November 14, 2017 FBI News Report entitled “FBI Tech Tuesday—Digital Defense Against Business E-mail Compromises” included this advice about

Continue Reading FBI recommends two-factor authentication & training to thwart Spearphishing!

Darkreading reported that every “business with BYOD and corporate mobile device users across the globe has been exposed to mobile malware.”  The November 17, 2017 report entitled “Mobile Malware Incidents Hit 100% of Businesses” included these comments:

…BYOD devices are usually more susceptible to attack than corporate devices

Continue Reading 100% of businesses affected by mobile malware (think BYOD)!

Darkreading reported that criminals are “using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to populate search results with malicious links and distribute the Zeus Panda Banking Trojan through a compromised Word document.”  The November 3, 2017 article entitled “Hackers Poison Google Search Results to Deliver Zeus Panda” included these comments:

SEO

Continue Reading Think twice before relying on search engine results since they may have MALWARE links!