Security News

Despite growing attention and budgets for cybersecurity in recent years, attacks have only become more common and more severe. It's easy to assume that the solution to the cybersecurity problem is money- to hire more security experts, to invest in more tools and technology.

DOUG. OK, we've got some tips if you are affected by this, starting with: Don't click "Helpful" links in emails or other messages. Apple patches are out - old iPhones get an old zero-day fix at last!

SMBs are aware of increasing cyber threats and allocating resources and investing in areas such as network and cloud security, according to Datto. 69% of SMBs currently have cyber insurance and 34% of those without cyber insurance are highly likely to get it in the next year.

Personal employee or customer data accounted for nearly 45% of all data stolen between July 2021 and June 2022, while companies' source code and proprietary information accounted for a further 6.7% and 5.6% respectively, according to Imperva. "It's very encouraging to see such a decline in stolen credit card data and passwords. It suggests that more organizations are using basic security tactics such as Multi-factor Authentication, which makes it much harder for outside cyber attackers to gain the access required to breach data," says Terry Ray, SVP and Field CTO at Imperva.

So we though we'd take a quick look back at some of the major issues we covered over the last couple of weeks, and reiterate the serious security lessons we can learn from them. If you are ever stuck with doing a data breach notification, don't try to rewrite history to your marketing advantage.

Canada Unity, one of the groups that organized last year's so-called Freedom Convoy during which truckers and others overtook Canadian city streets to protest mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, has canceled a repeat demonstration planned for February 17 to 20, according to a press release posted to the group's Facebook page. "As a result of these security breaches that are beyond our control, I cannot in good conscience guarantee Public Safety as I promised, nor can I guarantee other Team Canada Unity Freedom Convoy National Partners that could be deemed as convoy organizers, protection from being charged under Ontario's Bill 100 Act," wrote James Bauder, one of the group's organizers, in a post that has since been removed.

IBM found that it takes on average 277 days to discover a security breach and costs businesses an average of $4.35 million per breach. The time-to-discovery can blindside companies, and with a recession looming, this is not the time for them to be unprepared.

DOUG. Break out the old tag in HTML, make it blink a little bit? [LAUGHS]. DUCK. Doug, for a moment, I was worried you were going to use the word [LAUGHS] .

Australian health insurance provider Medibank has confirmed that another batch of the customer data stolen in the recent breach has been leaked. Medibank is making an effort to minimize the bad news, somewhat, by saying that much the data leaked is incomplete and hard to understand.

The Australian parliament has approved a bill to amend the country's privacy legislation, significantly increasing the maximum penalties to AU$50 million for companies and data controllers who suffered large-scale data breaches. Previously, the penalty for severe data exposures was AU$2.22 million, considered wholly inadequate to incentivize companies to improve their data security mechanisms.