Security News
During lockdown, offices have been empty and quiet - but not dead. Networks have continued to run, and IoT devices have continued to operate unattended. A study of more than 500 million IoT device transactions in little over two weeks between December 15 and December 31, 2020 discovered a 700% increase in IoT malware over a previous study of pre-lockdown 2019.
Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit has seized 17 malicious domains used by scammers in a business email compromise campaign targeting the company's customers. The domains taken down by Microsoft were so-called "Homoglyph" domains registered to resemble those of legitimate business.
As COVID-19 vaccinations continue, companies embrace hybrid work, employees return to the office and the U.S. opens up, violence and physical threats to businesses are occurring at an unsettling, record-high pace, according to the Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence. The study showcases the collective perspectives of physical security directors, physical security decision-makers, chief security officers, chief information officers, chief technology officers, chief information security officers and IT leaders at American companies on how physical security challenges and opportunities are unfolding in 2021 as the country emerges from the pandemic.
Owl Cyber Defense Solutions announced the opening of its new regional office, located in Abu Dhabi. The new office, hosted and sponsored by Al Makamin Commercial Projects LLC, part of Sultan International Holding, LLC -, will house Owl's in-region field staff that support the company's growing customer base of oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, transmission and distribution, nuclear, renewable energy and water/wastewater operators; along with serving government agencies.
As employees reunite for the first time in a long time, it's a good opportunity for companies to rebuild a stronger office security culture between employees and security teams - one that comes from a place of positive intent. Create a positive intent security culture for your office.
Securonix announced it has opened its office in Tokyo, Japan, and will be offering a local Securonix Cloud pod in the region. As its platform gains rapid traction among global organizations, this investment in the Asia-Pacific region will enable Securonix to enhance its support for new and existing customers in Japan.
Legacy users of Microsoft Excel are being targeted in a malware campaign that uses a novel malware-obfuscation technique to disable Office defenses and deliver the Zloader trojan. The attack, according to research published Thursday by McAfee, marries functions in Microsoft Office Word and Excel to work together to download the Zloader payload, without triggering an alert warning for end users of the malicious attack.
While it's a norm for phishing campaigns that distribute weaponized Microsoft Office documents to prompt victims to enable macros in order to trigger the infection chain directly, new findings indicate attackers are using non-malicious documents to disable security warnings prior to executing macro code to infect victims' computers. In yet another instance of malware authors continue to evolve their techniques to evade detection, researchers from McAfee Labs stumbled upon a novel tactic that "Downloads and executes malicious DLLs without any malicious code present in the initial spammed attachment macro."
Microsoft released the July 2021 non-security Microsoft Office updates with improvements and fixes for crashes and issues affecting Windows Installer editions of Office 2016 products. One week ago, Microsoft resolved issues and updated features for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Microsoft 365 Apps for business, and the subscription versions of the desktop apps for Project and Visio.
The Cabinet Office spaffed almost £300,000 on cybersecurity-related training for its staff in the last year - an eye-popping increase of almost 500 per cent on the year before. This is according to a Freedom of Information request by political think tank Parliament Street, which found the Cabinet Office lavished £274,142.