he news keeps getting worse for users still clinging to the aging Windows XP operating system. First, Microsoft itself stopped supporting the platform, no longer providing the millions of users still working with the OS with critical security patches to minimize the danger from the hacking community.
Alex Holden is one of the good guys. You’ve probably never heard of him, but he works for Hold Security, and spends his time in the dark corners of the internet, scouting out what data the hacking community has for sale.
Holden’s latest finding shows that a hacker was selling an extensive database containing the user names and passwords for more than a quarter of a million free email accounts, all for less than a dollar.
The numbers are in, and they’re pretty grim. Trustware has released their annual Global Security Report, which outlines the current trends in cybercrime. Chief among the findings in the report is that fully 60% of the hacking attacks the company investigated in 2015 were driven by the desire to acquire credit card information.
Earlier this year, Bangladesh Bank, one of the largest in the nation of Bangladesh, was successfully breached. The keen hackers made off with a staggering $80 million, when they used the bank’s system to hack into the SWIFT network, which is a cooperative system responsible for handling the vast majority of the world’s cross-border payments.
Does your company work with health information in any capacity? If it does, be advised, HIPAA violations are real, and can cost you and your business big money.
The most recent company to find itself in the crosshairs of the Department of Health and Human Services is the Feinstein Institute, which is a non-profit biomedical research concern, sponsored by Northwell Health, Inc.
On the heels of the FBI’s dustup with Apple Computer, the Judiciary committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has advanced a bill to the full chamber that would give cloud-stored data and emails more than 180 days old some much needed protection from law enforcement searches.
Windows XP was, by any measure, the most successful and ubiquitous operating system of all time. To this day, now two years after Microsoft formally ended support for the platform, there are still tens of millions of computers running XP. Fully, this is approximately 10.9% of the PCs on the planet.
Here’s the hard reality: Even if you devote sufficient resources to get the best security money can buy to protect your business from hackers, you might still be at risk. The reason? Well, in addition to the fact that there’s no such thing as security that a determined hacker can’t breach, there’s the simple fact that your security protocols aren’t the only ones in play during the conduct of your business.
Are you, or is someone you know a driver for Uber? Have you used the rideshare service to get from Point A to Point B? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then odds are good that at least some of your information has been shared with a variety of government agencies.
When you surf the web, do you use a VPN (Virtual Private Network)? More than half a billion of the web’s users do, which is about a quarter of the web’s population, so you may be one of them. If you’re not, you should consider it, because it makes your browsing experience safer and more secure.
