By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan
This week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its Cybersecurity Strategy. The five “pillar” strategy will be executed by the DHS over the next five years, and aims to improve national cybersecurity risk management.
By Cameron Abbott and Keely O’Dowd
The Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council (Council) was recently fined £120,000 (approximately AUD$217,920) by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for the unauthorised processing of personal data belonging to 943 people who owned vacant properties in the Borough.
By Warwick Andersen, Rob Pulham and Keely O’Dowd
Following on from Friday’s blog, we have looked at a particular aspect of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme quarterly report in more detail.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
While the recent Facebook saga has underlined the fact that using a password to protect your data doesn’t mean it won’t be improperly accessed, we have become used to needing to create, remember and use passwords in most aspects of our digital lives.
But the humble letter/number/symbol combination may soon be a thing of the past, with a new web standard – the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) – expected to be issued soon.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
Since the introduction of self-serve checkouts in Australian supermarkets nearly ten years ago, customers have been engaging in the simplest of hacks to outsmart the supermarket technology. Mum and Dad cyber criminals? Not so much– mostly it is just by putting through more expensive items as much cheaper ones (think a kilo of lemons as a kilo of potatoes).
But thanks to an Aussie start-up, new AI technology will put an end to customer’s criminal careers. Read More
By Cameron Abbott and Harry Crawford
The NSW Government’s vulnerability to hacking has been exposed in a report by state’s auditor-general, in which it was revealed that one government agency took 49 days to shut down a hack.
This hack started with an email account of the unnamed agency being compromised and used to send out “phishing” emails to get the credentials of finance staff members. By day 20, 300 staff had clicked on the bogus link in the phishing email. 200 email accounts ended up being under the control of the hackers.
By Cameron Abbott and Harry Crawford
No matter how much you spend on cybersecurity technology, data breaches can occur in the most basic ways, for example by leaving an old filing cabinet lying around. This demonstrates the need for a holistic approach to information security.
Recently, highly confidential government papers were discovered inside two locked filing cabinets that were purchased at a second-hand furniture shop in Canberra. What likely happened was a public servant overseeing an office clean up unwittingly sold the filing cabinets containing state secrets to the furniture shop.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
Sometimes you don’t need a “hack” to have a cybersecurity issue. The locations of several US military bases in the Middle East seem to have been inadvertently revealed through US soldiers’ use of fitness tracking devices, and the fitness tracking app Strava. Read More
By Cameron Abbott and Harry Crawford
“Free” Wi-Fi isn’t necessarily so. The Wi-Fi provided in a Starbucks store in Buenos Aires was recently discovered to be planting malware onto customer’s laptops. This is another lesson in how cybersecurity can affect even the most innocuous corner-store businesses.
By Cameron Abbott and Harry Crawford
A recent survey has shown that nearly one-third (29%) of US businesses experienced a data breach in the previous year.
The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, part of global reinsurer Munich Re, conducted the survey which shows that 8 in 10 affected businesses spent at least $5,000 to respond. 27 percent of the businesses spent between US$5,000 and US$50,000 to respond to the data breach and 30 percent spent between US$50,000 and US$100,000, and a considerable portion spent even more than that. The costs were not only directly financial, with two-thirds of the affected businesses reporting their reputation was negatively impacted.
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