Tag Archive for: CLIENTS.

TTEC hit with ransomware attack, hampering work for major clients

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US customer experience technology giant TTEC has announced a “cybersecurity incident” but confirmed to employees that it was hit with ransomware.

The company, with nearly 61,000 employees and billions in annual revenue, sent a message to employees this week warning them not to click on a link titled “!RA!G!N!A!R!” according to KrebsonSecurity. The message indicates the attack may have been launched by the prolific Ragnar Locker ransomware group or someone trying to impersonate them. 

TTEC told employees that it was having system outages and was working to remove the malicious “!RA!G!N!A!R!” file from its system.

In a statement to ZDNet, TTEC corporate communications vice president Tim Blair would not confirm that it was a ransomware incident but said some of the company’s data was encrypted and “business activities at several facilities have been temporarily disrupted.”

“TTEC immediately activated its information security incident response business continuity protocols, isolated the systems involved, and took other appropriate measures to contain the incident,” Blair said. 

“We are now in the process of  carefully and deliberately restoring the systems that have been involved. We also launched an investigation, typical under the circumstances, to determine the potential impacts. In serving our clients TTEC generally does not maintain our clients’ data, and the investigation to date has not identified compromise to clients’ data. That investigation is on-going and we will take additional action, as appropriate, based on the investigation’s results.”

TTEC works with some of the biggest companies in the world, including Verizon, Best Buy, Dish Network, Bank of America and Kaiser Permanente.

KrebsonSecurity was able to obtain the internal message from a reader, who told the blog that the “widespread” system outage began on Sunday, September 12. The source told KrebsonSecurity that thousands of TTEC employees working on accounts for Verizon, Kaiser Permanente and Bank of America were unable to do any tasks because of the attack while many other customer support teams reported being…

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How your commercial clients should be monitoring their cyber risk Canadian Underwriter

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With a large number of employees working from home during the pandemic, commercial clients need some way of assigning a risk score to the cyber exposure posed by their users, software applications, and hardware devices, a Canadian information technology security expert suggests.

“In this day and age, many organizations are using SaaS [software as a service] applications and cloud apps,” Antoine Saikaley, technical director of IT security vendor Trend Micro Canada, said in a recent interview. “[Risk managers need to be] able to assess quickly what applications their organization is using, and the risk scores of those apps, so that they can make the decision of whether to sanction it or un-sanction those apps.”

Trend Micro recently released results of a survey of 2,303 information technology security and security operations decisionmakers, 101 of whom were Canadian. The survey found security operations centre and IT security teams are suffering from high levels of stress outside of the working day — with alert overload being a prime culprit, Trend Micro said May 26 in a release.

Canadian Underwriter asked Saikaley what advice commercial brokers should give clients about information security risk if they still have a lot of people working from home.

Your commercial clients should have tools that give them “risk ratings” for users, devices, and applications, replied Saikaley.

Clients should monitor their end-users for unusual activity, accessing risky applications, and e-mail based threats, Trend Micro advises.

To manage cyber security risk, it is not enough for your clients to monitor the computers, Internet traffic, and incoming mail. The client also needs to monitor devices such as printers and cameras, as well as third-party contractors that connect to the computer network, suggested Saikaley.

Trend Micro says its Vision One product lets organizations continuously audit and assess the risk of users, devices, and cloud applications using a calculated risk score. The idea is to let computer security staff take quick action to manage cyber risk.

Vision One provides a risk score of more than 30,000 cloud applications, based on web reputation, security compliance,…

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IBM To Establish New Cybersecurity Center For US Federal Clients

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WASHINGTON, June 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it is creating the IBM Center for Government Cybersecurity, a collaborative environment focused on helping federal agencies address current and future cybersecurity threats. The center will facilitate events and learnings, drawing on IBM’s cybersecurity expertise from delivering software and managed services to over 17,500 security customers globally. Working with a group of internal IBM experts and external advisors, including former government officials with decades of cybersecurity experience, the center will leverage IBM technology and host workshops focused on priorities such as zero trust frameworks and cloud security, complemented by access to IBM Research labs to collaborate around the future of encryption.

As recent threats like SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack against critical infrastructure have shown, the threat landscape has crossed over from the digital world to the physical. In fact, the 2021 IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index found that ransomware accounted for 33% of the attacks on government organizations in 2020. With the US Federal government furthering its investment in hybrid cloud, new approaches for cybersecurity should focus on protecting both systems as well as data – no matter where it is – either on premise, in the cloud, or at the edge.

The IBM Center for Government Cybersecurity will be housed at IBM’s offices in downtown Washington DC. The new facility will feature secured laboratory space where government customers can collaborate on unique solutions for advanced security threats leveraging insights from demos of IBM technologies and services. Initially, IBM will conduct virtual sessions to accommodate any challenges to meeting in person, with the capability to execute engagements at on-site customer locations.

“IBM is committed to helping our US Federal government customers meet cybersecurity modernization requirements – both for current and future threats,” said Stephen LaFleche, General Manager Public and Federal Market, IBM. “Hybrid cloud environments can provide an opportunity to implement new technologies and techniques,…

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Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz Says It’s Really Unfair That He Should Have To Tell Clients And Courts How Frequently He’s Been Caught Lying In Court

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Last month we wrote about the ultimate benchslap against noted copyright troll Richard Liebowitz. Judge Jesse Furman in the Southern District of NY published a 61 page opinion that goes into massive detail on Liebowitz’s longstanding pattern and practice of lying to courts over and over and over again. Beyond going into the cringe-worthy details of many lies told in this specific case — Arthur Usherson v. Bandshell Artist Management — it includes an appendix with 40 examples of Liebowitz lying, misrepresenting, and/or being sanctioned in other cases. It’s pretty stunning. The order dumped over $ 100k in sanctions on Liebowitz, but much more damning, it referred Liebowitz to the Court’s Grievance Committee, required Liebowitz to give a copy of the order to all of his clients, and said that it needed to be filed along with any new lawsuits he filed — which is notable, since Liebowitz seems to file new lawsuits every other day or so. Read more