Security News > 2020

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, what challenges are CISOs and other cybersecurity executives dealing with and what things they don't want to be dealing with at the moment? Finally, as the economy takes a hit due to COVID-19 and the widespread "Shelter in place" directives, cybersecurity executives can expect some of the previously allocated cybersecurity budget to be cut and the funds redirected towards measures that will keep the organization afloat.

As a result, there are real consequences including loss of revenue, loss of productivity, and loss of reputation - all of which can jeopardize resiliency and are amplified given today's supply chain concerns related to COVID-19. "Organizations are starting to ask the question about what happens to them if their supply chain partners go out of business. Sadly, most companies don't have the risk visibility into their supply chains to answer that question," stated Brenda Ferraro, VP of third-party risk at Prevalent.

Five related APT groups operating in the interest of the Chinese government have systematically targeted Linux servers, Windows systems and mobile devices running Android while remaining undetected for nearly a decade, according to BlackBerry. Linux runs nearly all of the top 1 million websites online, 75% of all web servers, 98% of the world's supercomputers and 75% of major cloud service providers.

In our previous stories, you might have already read about various campaigns warning how threat actors are capitalizing on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in an attempt to infect your computers and mobile devices with malware or scam you out of your money. Most of the recent cyberattacks are primarily exploiting the fears around the COVID-19 outbreak-fueled by disinformation and fake news-to distribute malware via Google Play apps, malicious links and attachments, and execute ransomware attacks.

The COVID-19 crisis is driving the global growth of e-commerce sales, with millions of consumers worldwide in quarantine shopping for goods, services and entertainment online. Transaction volumes in most retail sectors have seen a 74 percent rise in March compared to the same period last year, while online gaming has seen a staggering increase of 97 percent, according to analysis by ACI Worldwide of hundreds of millions of transactions from global online retailers.

Successfully conducting cross-platform attacks targeting Linux, Windows and Android devices, the adversaries have been engaged in both financially motivated and targeted espionage attacks. For years, these groups have been strategically targeting Linux servers across a broad range of industry verticals, exploiting the immature defensive coverage within the environment and the inadequate use of endpoint protection and endpoint detection and response products, BlackBerry notes.

Workiva, provider of the world's leading connected reporting and compliance platform, launched W for ESEF, a focused solution to help European companies simplify compliance with the European Securities and Markets Authority requirements for European Single Electronic Format reporting. W for ESEF - which is available in 23 European languages - offers a distinct subset of functionality for companies that want a targeted ESEF solution.

Node announces the first ever self-service AI that enables companies of all sizes to build advanced artificial intelligence into their applications, products, and business processes. Node's horizontal AI platform-as-a-service allows companies to use AI to make smarter business decisions, without the need for data science capabilities or significant capital investment.

TransArmor Personal Data Protection from Fiserv, which incorporates industry-leading data security technology from Protegrity, helps businesses secure consumers' personal data. For the first time, when used alongside TransArmor Data Protection, Fiserv merchants will be able to tokenize and encrypt all payment card data and personal information throughout the entire customer and transaction lifecycle.

DataStax announced the general availability of DataStax Enterprise 6.8. Built on the foundation of Apache Cassandra, DSE is the scale-out data infrastructure for enterprises that need to handle any workload on-premises and in any cloud on a continuously available, active-everywhere data platform.