Security News

Investments in non-cloud infrastructure increased 7.3% year over year in 3Q21 to $14.6 billion, the third consecutive quarter to see an increase in year-over-year spend after a period of declining spending that started in 2Q19. Spending on shared cloud infrastructure reached $13 billion, an increase of 8.6% compared to 3Q20, and a 6.6% increase from the previous quarter. IDC expects to see continuously strong demand for shared cloud infrastructure with spending surpassing non-cloud infrastructure spending in 2022.

An active espionage campaign has been attributed to the threat actor known as Molerats that abuses legitimate cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox to host malware payloads and for command-and-control and the exfiltration of data from targets across the Middle East. The cyber offensive is believed to have been underway since at least July 2021, according to cloud-based information security company Zscaler, continuing previous efforts by the hacking group to conduct reconnaissance on the target hosts and plunder sensitive information.

NIS is the main law controlling security practices in the UK today. Currently a straight copy of the EU NIS Directive, one of the benefits of Brexit leapt upon by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is the new ability to amend NIS's reporting thresholds.

The coordinated cyberattacks targeting Ukrainian government websites and the deployment of a data-wiper malware called WhisperGate on select government systems are part of a broader wave of malicious activities aimed at sabotaging critical infrastructure in the country. "The attack used vulnerabilities in the site's content management systems and Log4j, as well as compromised accounts of employees of the development company," the SSU said, corroborating prior disclosure from the Ukraine CERT team.

Some 15 server infrastructures used by crims to prepare ransomware attacks were seized by cops yesterday as part of an international sting to take down VPNLab.net. The VPN provider's service gave users "Shielded communications and internet access" that was used in "Support of serious criminals acts such as ransomware deployment and other cybercrime activities," Europol said today.

For threat actors, there is a simple calculus at play - namely, what method of attack is a) easiest and b) most likely to yield the biggest return? And the answer, at this moment, is Linux-based cloud infrastructure, which makes up 80%+ of the total cloud infrastructure. These attacks will undoubtedly continue into 2022 and potential targets parties must remain vigilant.

Amid renewed tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Kazakhstan, American cybersecurity and intelligence agencies on Tuesday released a joint advisory on how to detect, respond to, and mitigate cyberattacks orchestrated by Russian state-sponsored actors. To that end, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and National Security Agency have laid bare the tactics, techniques, and procedures adopted by the adversaries, including spear-phishing, brute-force, and exploiting known vulnerabilities to gain initial access to target networks.

The FBI, CISA, and the NSA have warned critical infrastructure network defenders to be ready to detect and block incoming attacks targeting organizations from US critical infrastructure sectors, orchestrated by Russian-backed hacking groups. "In some cases, Russian state-sponsored cyber operations against critical infrastructure organizations have specifically targeted operational technology/industrial control systems networks with destructive malware."

The global healthcare cloud infrastructure market size is expected to reach $142 billion by 2028, according to ResearchAndMarkets. The growing trend of healthcare digitalization, rising expenditures, overburdened health systems, rising traffic on the network, growing data siloes, and the emergence of remote working is contributing to the demand for healthcare cloud infrastructure systems and solutions.

Let's examine some of the big challenges in OT security, and how zero trust can fix them. Zero trust is a security framework that assumes every user or device is a potential threat.