The Government released a report today launching a new strategy to support the export of UK cybersecurity technologies/businesses. The strategy is designed to: Promote the UK’s world-leading expertise and increase export growth in the security sector Strengthen defence capabilities in the UK and allied countries Support the ongoing work of the 2016 National Cyber Security Strategy Improve collaboration between Government and industry Andy Kays, CTO at Redscan: “It’s great to see the Government acknowledge the strength of the UK cybersecurity sector. Against a backdrop of ever-evolving threats, growing digital transformation and regulatory pressures, there has never been such global demand for…
ISBuzz Team
Interacting with computers and robots using normal, everyday language has been a mainstay of sci-fi moves since the 1950s. However it’s only been in the last five years or so that it has become an everyday reality, thanks to innovations such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and the widespread rollout of web-based instant messaging ‘chat’ platforms. These platforms connect people to chatbots – computer programs that can mimic human conversations using artificial intelligence – to handle a range of interactions between people and software, from following simple instructions to maintaining a quasi-conversation. Chatbots have been widely deployed in consumer-facing business…
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that more than 2,100 patient deaths per year are linked to data breaches at hospitals, according to Dr. Sung Choi, a researcher at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. The findings, which were presented last week at a cyberrisk quantification conference hosted by Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, highlight the need for health-care organizations to invest in cybersecurity and improve their post-breach remediation efforts. They also illustrate how data breaches can compromise the performance of organizations, even if lives aren’t involved. Leon Lerman, Co-Founder and CEO at Cynerio commented below. Leon Lerman, Co-Founder and CEO…
Businesses across Europe are busy making sure they are GDPR compliant ahead of its looming deadline of May 25th. The fast-approaching legislation will give consumers more control over how their personal data is being used and significantly increases the pressure on businesses to protect and secure customer information. Those who don’t comply will face huge financial penalties and are likely to be held publicly accountable for any misuse of customer data, potentially resulting in reputational damage and a loss of customers. Despite its implementation being weeks away, many companies are still trying to get their plans together in order to…
City of Atlanta has been hit by a ransomware attack, causing outages across internal and customer-facing applications. The cybercriminals are requesting a payment of $6,800 to unlock each computer or $51,000 for all of the needed keys. As of now, the city hasn’t paid and has assured citizens the systems will be restored soon. The FBI is currently investigating to find out who is responsible. You can view the tweet from the city here. IT security experts commented below. Gijsbert Janssen Van Doorn, Technology Evangelist at Zerto: “Without a data hostage, there is no ransom – that’s the technology mindset organizations,…
Following the news that the US Justice Department announced charges against nine Iranians and an Iranian company for attempting to hack into hundreds of universities worldwide, dozens of companies and parts of the U.S. government, IT security experts commented below. Gabriel Gumbs, Vice President at STEALTHbits Technologies: “It is very difficult to quantify the frequency or impact of Nation State sponsored attacks, more importantly there is a lack of emphasis on the means by which these attacks are perpetrated. The consensus among security professionals is that passwords are a poor mechanism for securing data, and often when we hear about sophisticated attackers…
As more and more Americans continue to turn to technology to file their taxes, there is — as with virtually all of today’s connectivity-driven convenience tools — an undercurrent of risk. But — as with other convenience tools — that risk is doing nothing to deter the use of e-filing methods. According to eFile, of the more than 135 million tax returns filed for the 2016 tax year, 92% were filed electronically. The IRS website notes a slight uptick over that rate so far this year; through March 16, more than 93% of the nearly 78 million returns received for…
The massive federal government spending bill unveiled includes $380 million to help safeguard U.S. voting systems from cyber attacks, in what would be Congress’ first concrete steps to bolster election security since the 2016 presidential campaign was marred by allegations of Russian meddling. Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at High-Tech Bridge commented below. Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at High-Tech Bridge: “The efforts to protect democracy are undoubtedly laudable. However, one should keep in mind that a direct attack on voting systems is highly difficult and very expensive, as it will require some local access to many different systems and devices. Moreover, if spotted, the…
As news broke today that the FBI is investigating a ransomware attack on the city of Atlanta that shut down city government systems, IT security experts commented below. Israel Barak, Chief Information Security officer at Cybereason: If WannaCry, NotPetya and BadRabbit taught us anything in 2017 it is that ransomware attacks can have devastating effects on for profit organizations and consumers. Individually, the NotPetya attack cost organizations in access of $1.2 billion dollars. Globally, our estimates show that organizations and consumers paid more than $10 billion in ransoms in 2017. While investigators explore the root cause of the ransomware attack in Atlanta, local and…
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has finally spoken up about the Cambridge Analytica debacle, telling CNN’s Laurie Segall “I’m really sorry that this happened.” However, Evgeny Chereshnev thinks it’s too little, too late. Evgeny Chereshnev, CEO at Biolink.Tech commented below. Evgeny Chereshnev, CEO at Biolink.Tech: “The reputational damage done by Facebook to its customers and partners is irreversible. The attempt to shift the spotlight by literally pointing to another entity to blame is a decent PR attempt, but it’s a low blow and wrong from a moral and commercial perspective. “It’s too little too late, because now everyone understands that Facebook is the problem. It’s not…