How IT leaders can address online privacy risks [Q&A]
Enterprises are facing a rapidly changing privacy landscape, in which some laws contradict each other, while struggling to reduce costs and gain visibility into their privacy risks.
Indeed there’s been a recent increase in lawsuits against companies for online privacy violations that is putting significant strain on C-level executives and they're looking to their IT leaders to address all of this risk with technology.
Number of active ransomware groups increases over 50 percent
A new report from dark web intelligence specialist Searchlight Cyber shows a 56 percent increase in the number of active ransomware groups this year compared to the first half of 2023, reflecting a diversification of the ransomware landscape.
LockBit has retained its top position despite the disruption caused by Operation Cronos, though its number of listed victims has fallen compared to H1 2023.
Average cost of industrial data breaches soars
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach skyrocketed to $4.88 million, up from $4.45 million in 2023, showing a 10 percent spike and the highest increase since the pandemic.
Some industries though have seen even bigger increases. Data from a Stocklytics survey of 604 organizations across 17 industries and in 16 countries between March 2023 and February 2024 shows the industrial sector has seen the biggest data breach cost growth in the past year.
Switching broadband in the UK is about to get easier
Changing your broadband service provider has always been a hassle. Usually it takes around 10 days, not to mention that you have to put up with phone calls and emails from your old supplier offering you better deals and pleading with you not to go.
For people in the UK, however, things are about to get a whole lot simpler. The One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo) is a non-profit organization that has set up a messaging platform called the TOTSCo Hub.
The future of data analytics in business intelligence [Q&A]
In a little more than a decade, data analytics has been through several big transformations. First, it became digitized. Second, we witnessed the emergence of 'big data' analytics, driven partly by digitization and partly by massively improved storage and processing capabilities.
Finally, in the last couple of years, analytics has been transformed once again by emerging generative AI models that can analyze data at a previously unseen scale and speed.
Vulnerabilities surge by 43 percent over 2023
Published vulnerabilities have increased by 43 percent compared to H1 2023, with 23,668 vulnerabilities reported in H1 2024 according to a new report from Forescout.
The average number of new CVEs per day is 111 or 3,381 per month, and 20 percent of exploited vulnerabilities affected VPN and network infrastructure.
The rise of third-party browser script attacks [Q&A]
Third-party browser scripts are the code snippets that organizations put into their websites to run ads, analytics, chatbots, etc -- essentially anything that isn't coded by the organization itself.
Which sounds innocuous enough, but these scripts are increasingly being used as a vector for cyberattacks. We spoke to Simon Wijckmans, CEO of c/side, to understand how these attacks operate and what can be done to defend against them.
Job applications written by AI create challenges for recruiters
Admit it, you have at some time or other exaggerated your skills when applying for a job. But a new survey finds that this is becoming much more of a problem since the advent of AI.
The survey by Capterra of 3,000 job seekers around the world shows that 58 percent say they are using AI tools as part of their job search.
LLMs vulnerable to prompt injection attacks
As we've already seen today AI systems are becoming increasingly popular targets for attack.
New research from Snyk and Lakera looks at the risks to AI agents and LLMs from prompt injection attacks.
UK government wants the AI to eat your homework
The UK government has announced the launch of a new scheme that will encourage the building of new generative AI tools to help teachers when they’re planning lessons or marking homework.
This will involve the creation of a 'data store' for education data including the national curriculum, guidance for teachers, lesson plans and more. The £3m ($3.96m) data store will help tech companies build AI tools that teachers can trust to help in their work by making this data machine readable.
Publicly available GenAI development apps open to exploitation
New research from Legit Security shows that widely available GenAI development services risk sensitive information exposure, or leakage of secrets.
Legit's analysis of unprotected vector databases finds that 30 servers investigated contained corporate or private data, including company email conversations, customer PII, product serial numbers, financial records, resumes, and contact information.
The critical gap in zero trust [Q&A]
As network boundaries can no longer be relied on to define the limits of cybersecurity, zero trust has become the overarching framework that now guides enterprise security strategies.
However, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) has its limitations, especially in application security, and this can open up risk for organizations heavily reliant on SaaS systems.
Businesses losing revenue to bot attacks
A new report reveals that 98 percent of organizations attacked by bots in the past year have lost revenue as a result.
The latest State of Bot Mitigation Report from Kasada, based on a survey of over 220 US tech professionals, also shows that despite investing heavily in bot defenses, most solutions are proving to be ineffective. Just one in five say that after initial deployment their bot mitigation solution retained effectiveness for more than 12 months.
Proton launches secure cloud storage for businesses
Swiss company Proton is known for its privacy focused solutions including secure mail, VPN and password manager. Today the company launches a new service, Proton Drive for Business.
This is a comprehensive solution designed to provide secure and private cloud storage, file sharing, and real-time document collaboration for organizations. In an era where data breaches and unauthorized use of company documents are common, this new service offers security and privacy to businesses of all sizes, with end-to-end encryption.
Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure increase 30 percent
Between January 2023 and January this year, critical infrastructure worldwide saw over 420 million attacks -- equivalent to 13 attacks per second -- marking a 30 percent increase from 2022.
A new report from security awareness specialist KnowBe4 shows cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure have surged globally, posing significant risks to national security and economic stability.
Ian's Bio
Ian spent almost 20 years working with computers before he discovered that writing about them was easier than fixing them. Since then he's written for a number of computer magazines and is a former editor of PC Utilities. Follow him on Mastodon
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