Cybersecurity

October marks the start of Fall, but for security professionals October is known for Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM) – previously known as the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The purpose of CSAM is to underscore the holistic societal responsibility all of us share in ensuring that our communities, organizations, and individuals are practicing proper cyber hygiene.

The worst time to figure out what you are going to do about an incident is in the middle of the incident – cyber or physical. From fire drills to business continuity exercises, it has become standard practice for organizations to develop and drill on physical incident plans. Conversely, few organizations develop and practice cyber incident response plans, despite the endless barrage of cyber attacks. Organizations with an effective cyber incident response plan will limit damage and reduce recovery time and costs of a cyber incident or attack.

Business email compromise (BEC) attacks cost organizations millions of dollars every year and there are no signs of them abating any time soon. In addition, executive level (C-suite) email accounts are witnessing significant numbers of attacks and their network privileges are making defensive measures more challenging. As such, there are a few simple cyber hygiene measures organizations can implement to protect themselves and mitigate further attacks. First, executives should receive role-based awareness training for recognizing suspicious emails.

The Conti ransomware group has jumped on the bandwagon of recent threats made by similar groups about calling in the experts or otherwise publicly sharing information about ransomware attacks. Last week, the Conti ransomware group released a statement threatening to publish victims’ data if details or screenshots of ransomware negotiations are leaked to media or security researchers.