1.) One of the cyber threat news articles which is trending on google right now is about a cyber attack on Singapore Red Cross(SRC) website which has led to the leak of personal data of more than 4,000 blood donors.
The news comes just after SingHealth cyber attack which took place almost 5 months ago in which health records of more than 1.5 million patients including the country’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong were leaked to hackers.
Highly placed sources say that the cyber attack took place on the database of Red Cross on May 8th this year due to a weak administrator password compromise. An investigation has been ordered by SRC secretary Benjamin William and all those who were impacted will be contacted via email to inform the details of the data breach.
2.) Now, coming to the news related to cyber security, a study conducted by a company called ProPublica says that most ransomware solution providers i.e cyber security companies are advising their clients to get rid of the malware by paying the hackers in Bitcoins or in any digital currency.
The survey also says that companies are advising their clients to pay the demanded ransom to hackers and then push the expenses to the customer by increasing the service charge.
Supporting the study is another research conducted by Coveware which adds that companies are showing more interest in paying the ransom then becoming proactive by opting for backup solutions. Also, the research claims that ransomware attacks are growing on a weekly note unlike yearly – seen last year.
According to Coverware ransomware incident response platform, most companies admit negotiating with scammers instead of taking the help of data backups.
That’s not only alarming but also interesting….isn’t it?
3.) The third news which is trending now on Google is about a special training being offered to US officials and Candidates + staff to guard against cyber attacks launched by cyber adversaries of US like Russia, China, and North Korea.
Obviously, the country doesn’t want to take any chances in 2021 elections of United States and so those working in the government sector of United States, especially Pentagon or NSA are being trained to thwart cyber attacks of any range.
“No more spying and manipulation of messages sent to voters by Chinese intelligence”, says Robby Mook, Former Secretary and In-charge of State Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign of 2016.
4.) This is the news related to the latest order issued by President Donald Trump on Wednesday which allows the state authorities to block all transactions made by & between Chinese firms- which were caught red-handedly spying on the populace and the government of United States- thus posing as unacceptable risks to the national security of United States.
Reacting to the news, Huawei claimed on Thursday that all such executive orders issued by the government of United States will be hindering the deployment and development of 5G network in the region which could cause other serious legal issues.
5.) Coming to the fifth news which is related to cybersecurity and trending on Google, Western Australian Government owned power generating company Horizon Power has made it official that a recent audit conducted by a third party firm has confirmed that its IT network and systems were super-vulnerable to cyber attacks due to poor contract management policies, procedures, and information security.
Horizon’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure which does the work of recording energy consumption and billing of more than 100,000 residents and 10,000 businesses is said to be one of the key applications which are supposed to be super vulnerable to threats.
On an additional note, Horizon Power was also found not to be performing a criminal history check on its staff which handles critical power infrastructure and systems. This can rise new issues as the said staff have the privilege to access positions of trust.
