Gerry Morley - Director of Cyber Security 4 Comments

Ransomware – WannaCry No More – Train and Phish your staff.

prevent ransomware

By now, many of you that have not been under a rock for the last couple of weeks have heard about the worldwide ransomware cyber-attack WannaCry Decrypt0r that began in earnest on Friday 12th May 2017. The new ransomware caused major disruption to the IT systems of 40 National Health System hospitals across the UK (resulting in most non-emergency operations being suspended). Not only that, but it also caused disruption to an additional 200,000 victims, distributed over at least 150 countries (including several banks, Renault, Nissan, FedEx Corp, Telefonica, German Railways and even the Russian Interior ministry).

How Did This Happen?

Global reports from cyber security experts confirm that this ransomware gets onto a network through an unsuspecting user clicking on a link or attachment in a spam email.

The last few years and countless data breaches have shown that human error (due to a lack of security awareness training) from phishing and social engineering is the number 1 cause of cyber-attacks, ransomware and data breaches worldwide. Unfortunately, many companies including hospitals who have not invested in security awareness training and ongoing testing of their staff with simulated fake emails (to keep them savvy to the latest scams) will continue to be the most vulnerable to this and future similar style cyber- attacks.

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Gerry Morley - Director of Cyber Security No Comments

Nasty Ransomware Virus DynA-Crypt Causes Full Blown “GDPR” Data Breach

Ransomware virus DynA-Crypt causes a full blown data breach as it not only encrypts your data, but then steals and uploads it online.

DynA-Crypt Ransomware

What this means?

The EU mandated GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which comes into force on 25th May 2018 will penalise companies not prepared for such data breaches resulting in large fines (approx. 4% of turnover or up to 20 Million Euro whichever is greater). To reduce the chances of being fined to the full extent of this new law – companies will need to begin to work on putting in place the necessary data protection processes and procedures to be able detect when a breach happens/happened, identify what if any personally identifiable data was stolen and have a breach response plan that will ensure the breach is properly handled and reported to the Data Protection Commissioner within 72 hours of detecting the breach. Read more

Gerry Morley - Director of Cyber Security 1 Comment

Covert “Fileless” Virus Evades Banks Cyber Defences – Reinforces Need for Robust Disaster Recovery & Cyber Security Procedures

Imagine a cyber threat that can evade the bank level cyber security…leave little trace of infection and bypass most Anti-Virus software.

Hundreds of companies around the globe including several major banks and financial institutions have reportedly been hit by a cyber security attack masquerading as a dangerous covert memory-based fileless malware. The malware has been detected in at least 40 countries worldwide (including UK, France, USA to name a few).

Fileless Malware Cyber Security Geography

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