Tag Archive for: cybersecurity

UGC asks colleges to boost cybersecurity

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With online education becoming a new normal, India’s apex higher education regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked colleges, institutions and universities to strengthen the cybersecurity mechanism and put in place a cybersecurity ecosystem.

This comes as India battles a surge in cybersecurity incidents post the pandemic as several services, including education, have shifted online.

Education is a key target for cyber frauds as it deals with a huge amount of data on demographic and professional records of students, staff and allied education sector. It is also a big user of online financial transactions, becoming an easy target for cybercriminals.

The education regulator has also asked higher educational institutions, numbering over 50,000, to be on the guard and report cybersecurity incidents.

UGC, in a letter to institutions, told them its effort is to draw their attention and action “to strengthen cybersecurity and to tackle the unforeseen challenges of cybercrime and develop an ecosystem for cyber security in HEIs (higher education institutions)”. Mint has seen a copy of the letter.

The education regulator said institutions must sensitize staff and students to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre and initiatives take by the home ministry to prevent cybercrimes.

The regulator’s directive may work as a template for the overall education sector at a time usage and integration of technology in education is going to increase and the education ministry itself is speaking about the value of technology in education to increase access and better use of resources.

Cybersecurity incidents have been rising of late. Barracuda Networks, a cybersecurity firm, found more than 1,000 spear-phishing attacks targeting educational institutions in India between July and September 2020, Mint reported in November. The lack of awareness, tight budgets and limited resources make institutions and schools easy targets for cyberattacks and “unfortunately, make attacks more effective”, Murali Urs, country manager, India, of Barracuda Networks, said at the time.

A government official,…

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What contractors should take from T-Mobile’s ‘100million people’ cybersecurity breach

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Do you use T-Mobile as part of your contracting operations?

If so, you may be impacted by a huge T-Mobile security breach.

In fact, even though the US brand is synonymous with mobile phones, it’s not just handheld customers who are affected– if you use the company’s other services like cloud storage or as a tool for providing services to your clients as a contractor, you’re still likely to be impacted – that’s how big this breach is, writes Leila Saidi and Alix Balsan of Gerrish Legal.

What happened at T-Mobile?

On Monday August 16th, the Bellevue-based telecom company confirmed reports which first surfaced on Motherboard that it had been hit by a cybersecurity breach – presumably some time during the first two weeks of August 2021.

In its cybersecurity update dated August 16th, T-Mobile admitted that an unauthorised access to some of its data had occurred – but, frustratingly for customers, that it was unable to confirm if any personal data was involved.

In an update published the next day, T-Mobile admitted that a preliminary analysis had revealed that as many as 7.8 million current T-Mobile customers were impacted, as well as just over 40 million records of former or prospective customers. And as part of its most recent update (August 19th), T-Mobile explained that although the exact nature of the personal data that had been compromised could vary by individual, information included individuals’ names, drivers’ licences, government identification numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and T-Mobile account PINs.

That amounts to a massive cybersecurity breach. The company added that approximately 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account PINs were also exposed. That compares to the claims of hackers who reportedly put the total number of T-Mobile customers affected by the breach at 100 million. The company has not agreed to that figure, indicating instead that it’s more like half that number of customers who have been exposed.

The T-Mobile data breach: possible implications for contractors

What could all this mean for you as an IT, data or telecoms contractor – especially in relation to your security and…

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Postmortem on U.S. Census Hack Exposes Cybersecurity Failures

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Government says cybersecurity failures were many within failed January hack of U.S. Census Bureau systems. Threat actors exploited an unpatched Citrix flaw to breach the network of the U.S. Census …

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CSAW'17 Cyber Security Awareness Week

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