News
Are accountants guilty of procrastinating over cyber security?
Brian Palmer of the AAT is asking in Accountancy Age “how good are you as an accountant at protecting client data?” “But – having identified your passion for client confidentially – I would now like to ask you to consider …“How good are you at ensuring the security of the data you’ve been entrusted with?”…”When we need…
Read MoreRussia’s prepares plan to ‘switch off’ external internet if under attack
The Register is reporting that Russia is working on a plan to switch its internet into an intranet if faced with a large scale external cyber attack. This means that all external traffic would be routed through controlled gateways which would isolate their network in the event of “targeted large-scale external influence” The experiment suggests…
Read MoreFake BBC news being used to convince public to invest in bitcoin scheme
The BBC is reporting that a spoof news page is being used to convince members of the public to invest in a bitcoin scheme and using fake news to link the brand to entrepreneurs. Previously adverts have also appeared on social media claiming that high profile entrepreneurs such as Lord Alan Sugar and Sir Richard…
Read MoreMajor data breach of 22m passwords and 773m email addresses discovered
A massive data dump of 773 million email addresses and 22m passwords has been discovered on a popular hacking forum. The breach is referred to as collection #1 by the security researcher, Troy Hunt, who discovered it. This is a significant collection of breached data and Troy Hunt has uploaded to the ‘have I been…
Read MoreThe changing behaviour of hackers in 2018
Insurance Business is reporting that cyber criminals are tending to move away from mass mailing of malicious malware towards more targeted attacks. The reasons for this are identified as endpoint security becoming increasingly sophisticated and employees becoming more aware of malicious links. Graeme Newman, chief innovation officer at CFC Underwriting reports that much of the…
Read MoreMarriott Hotel data breach affects 327 million guests
The BBC is reporting that the records of 327 million guests of Marriott Hotel may have been affected by a data breach involving its reservation database. The hotel chain said the guest reservation database of its Starwood division had been compromised by an unauthorised party. It said an internal investigation found an attacker had been…
Read MoreUK financial services firms are fighting average of five cyber attacks a year
Finance.co.uk are reporting that new research has revealed that UK financial services firms are fighting an average of five cyber attacks a year. …The independent research report: “Under Attack: Assessing the struggle of UK SMBs against cybercriminals”, commissioned by online encryption specialists Appstractor Corporation and conducted by Sapio Research revealed 8% of companies faced at least one…
Read MoreRussia is now the greatest threat to national security
The BBC is reporting that Chief of the General Staff said Russia is a significantly bigger threat than Islamic terrorist groups …In October, the UK government also accused Russia’s GRU military intelligence service of being behind four high-profile cyber-attacks on targets including the US Democratic Party and a small TV network in Britain… …In his first…
Read MoreMPs seize Facebook documents
The BBC is reporting that Facebook documents have been seized by MPs using parliamentary powers to investigate the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. …The documents were intercepted when an executive of US tech firm Six4Three was on a trip to London. …the House of Commons serjeant-at-arms was sent to the businessman’s hotel and he was given…
Read MoreMiSafes’ child-tracking smartwatches are ‘easy to hack’
The BBC is reporting that a location-tracking smartwatch worn by thousands of children has proven relatively easy to hack. A security researcher found the devices neither encrypted the data they used nor secured each child’s account. As a result, he said, he could track children’s movements, surreptitiously listen in to their activities and make spoof…
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