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More Than Half of Major Cyber Incidents in 2020 Involved Ransomware

With 2020 coming to an end, after what felt like an eternity to many, cybersecurity & technology firm CrowdStrike have released their annual ‘Cyber Front Lines’ incident-analysis report, and it contains much food for thought. One of the more striking figures is that more than half of the cyber attacks they investigated involved ransomware; a form of malware which encrypts any files it can find until a ‘ransom’ is paid. Ransomware attacks are known to be extremely destructive, spreading quickly through networks and shutting down critical operations as they go.

Financially-motivated attacks in general, the majority of which were ransomware-based, made up 63% of the more than 200 incidents they responded to, demonstrating that the file-encrypting malware is big business for cyber criminals, and not going away any time soon.

The 2020 CrowdStrike Services Cyber Front Lines report shows how cyber criminals are becoming increasingly successful at monetising their crimes, wreaking havoc on businesses in the process.
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Shane Chambers No Comments

WordPress Sites Seeing Increased Cyber Attacks Thanks to Plugin Vulnerability

The team behind Wordfence, a popular security plugin for WordPress, have reported seeing a large increase in cyber attacks aimed at WordPress-based websites over the last few weeks. This is believed to be due to a vulnerability in another WordPress plugin, File Manager, which has over 700,000 active installations. While the vulnerability only affects those running certain versions of the File Manager plugin, Wordfence reports that cyber attacks are up across the board, as cyber criminals cast a wide net with their attacks.

An estimated 455 million websites run on WordPress, accounting for more than 30% of sites worldwide.
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Shane Chambers No Comments

Property Firm Collapses After Ex-Employee Deletes Dropbox

A 58 year old woman in the UK has become one of a handful of people ever convicted under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 after committing an act of ‘revenge’ against a former business associate, causing a new company to cease operations and lay off staff.

The woman, Danielle Bulley, was formerly a director at successful UK-based property magazine Property Press, alongside co-director Alan Marriott. When Bulley and Marriott fell out in 2018, Bulley left the company and Marriott started a new venue called Letterbox Productions – using former assets from Property Press.

Danielle Bulley, a 58 year old British woman with no previous convictions, was sentenced to 18 months of unpaid community service under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
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Users Warned of Major New Phishing Campaign, Using Infected Excel Files

Microsoft has released a statement warning users to stay vigilant of phishing emails, as a malicious campaign has been detected which tricks users into downloading an Excel sheet containing harmful software. The criminals responsible are taking advantage of the confusion around Covid-19, as many others have been doing lately, to convince users that the emails are genuine and to enable macros within Excel once the file has been downloaded to their computer.

Users should be extremely wary of attachments they are not expecting, as many common file types can be injected with malware.
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Tech Guard Tips: How to Work from Home Securely

Just a few months ago, it would be unimaginable that so many of us would be working from home. While more and more companies had been allowing some users to work remotely to some degree, the situation that we now find ourselves in is that a significant chunk of the workforce is now working from their homes, on very short notice.

As the Covid19 pandemic grips the world, cyber criminals have seen this increased online activity and confusion as an opportunity for them to take advantage of, and have stepped up phishing and scam attacks. We’ve already covered some of the main threats to look out for in another article, but now we’d like to share some of our tips on making sure you protect your company and your family’s data while working from home.

Many users are working from home for the first time, without the advanced safety features of their corporate networks to protect them.

Here at Tech Guard, we’ve come up with a handy list of our top security tips for those who find themselves suddenly working from home.

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