Tag Archive for: grows

Ransomware threat against colleges grows, survey finds

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Dive Brief: 

  • Ransomware attacks targeted the education sector more than any other industry in the last year, with 79% of surveyed higher education institutions across the world reporting being hit, according to an annual report from Sophos, a U.K.-based cybersecurity firm. 
  • Of the higher ed institutions that reported ransomware attacks, 59% said it resulted in them losing “a lot of” business and revenue. Around one-fourth, 28%, reported smaller losses. 
  • Hackers exploited system vulnerabilities in 4 in 10 higher education ransomware attacks, making them the sector’s most common root issue. Compromised credentials caused another 37% of attacks, while malicious emails led to 12% of reported incidents. 

Dive Insight: 

Sophos’ latest survey suggests that ransomware is increasingly targeting colleges and universities. In 2022’s report, only 64% of higher education institutions said they had been hit by ransomware in the past year — 15 percentage points lower than the share who reported incidents in the latest survey.

In some cases, hackers are ramping up their efforts to get colleges to pay for the return of their data. 

Knox College, a private liberal arts institution in Illinois, made headlines late last year when a hacker group broke into its computer system and accessed student data. The group that took credit for the breach, known as Hive, emailed students saying they had retrieved “personal information, medical records, psychological assessments, and many other sensitive data,” and threatened to sell their social security numbers. 

The attack spurred multiple lawsuits from students, who allege that Knox failed to follow the latest security practices to shield sensitive data. 

“Sophos’ latest report is a clarion reminder that ransomware remains a major threat, both in scope and scale,” said Megan Stifel, chief strategy officer at the Institute for Security and…

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Cyber security breaches are up multiple times as Internet penetration grows

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With the rise in Internet penetration and use of digital banking in the country, the number of cyber attacks or cyber security incidents in India have gone up multiple times over the last few years.


 


Data accessed by IANS said that cyber security incidents related to government institutions have increased significantly, particularly in 2022.


As many as 54,314, 48,285 and 1,92,439 cyber security incidents related to government agencies, institutions and undertakings were observed during the years 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively.


According to official data, total number of cyber security incidents tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) during the year 2019 was 3,94,499, which spiked to 11,58,208 in 2020 and further increased to 14,02,809 in 2021. Similarly, 13,91,457 cyber security incidents were observed in 2022.


The cyber attack, which put the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi out of order on November 23 was one such example. Multiple agencies were roped in to resolve the issues.


Similarly, cyber attackers on December 1 briefly hacked the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s Twitter handle. This was the second major cyber attack on a government site after AIIMS Delhi’s server was majorly hacked.


A Parliamentary standing committee in its report observed that with the advancement of technology, cyber crimes have emerged as a major issue across the globe. The cyber crimes transcend geographical boundaries, which make it tough to track the criminals.


The Committee expressed its deep concerns over the rising trend of cyber crimes in the country. It felt that on this issue, both the Central and state governments need to get together on the same boat to tackle the growing menace of cyber crime.


“The committee observed that traditional training of the police personnel is not sufficient to deal with cyber crimes as these criminals are tech-savvy and are following new modus-operandi on a regular basis,” said the report ‘Police -Training, Modernisation and Reforms’ tabled in the Parliament this month.


The committee in the…

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The year’s best apps, Twitter rival Hive’s security woes, App Store backlash grows • TechCrunch

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Twitter, Spotify, Meta and Coinbase all bash Apple’s App Store

Elon Musk wasn’t happy with Apple this week. The new Twitter exec claimed Apple threatened to remove the app from the App Store — which was not likely true. Instead of taking on the claims directly and starting a Twitter fight, Apple CEO Tim Cook invited Musk to Apple’s campus, where they took a walk and resolved their differences. Or at least that’s how Musk put it, referring to the potential Twitter ban as a “misunderstanding.”

“Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so,” said Musk regarding Twitter’s potential App Store removal.

That’s not to say Apple wouldn’t ever ban Twitter one day if it found itself so unmoderated that it was allowing unchecked hate speech or stoking violence. It once took action against Parler, and Twitter could see App Store policy enforcement if it devolved as well.

The Musk-Apple drama stirred others to tweet their App Store issues, too.

Spotify…

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AWS grows collaboration with PA Consulting

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An expanded collaboration has been announced between PA Consulting and AWS. The multi-year agreement will see the advisory firm help drive innovation and new industry solutions in the cloud.

A subsidiary of internet giant Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. The platform enables clients to grow businesses through alignment with its sales, marketing, funding, capture, and proposal teams.

Rahul Gupta, Partner and Cloud Executive Sponsor at PA Consulting, commented, “Our strategic agreement with AWS fundamentally accelerates our cloud services business and solutions.  We are committed to helping our clients find digital, cloud based solutions to drive growth, and this SA cements that goal. We are excited to work with AWS as we build out new cloud-based solutions for clients across a number of key industries.”

AWS grows collaboration with PA Consulting

PA will now collaborate with AWS to build market-specific solutions for a number of key industries. These include cyber security for financial services companies, advanced health care solutions for local authorities, and real time analytics on shopping behaviours for bricks and mortar retailers.

Vittorio Sanvito, Director of Partner Development in EMEA at AWS, remarked, “This agreement is recognition that many organisations recognise the benefits of implementing  cloud services and the next generation of digital growth will come from partners that can combine these services with deep sector knowledge. We are delighted to strengthen our collaboration with PA Consulting, which encapsulates a robust services platform with experienced cloud experts who can help companies with their migration journey to AWS.”

The agreement continues a sustained partnership between PA and AWS. The consulting firm has been a key delivery partner for the platform for some time now, helping deploy it across clients in multiple sectors. For example, PA was even named winner of the Most Valuable Amazon Connect Deployment prize at the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards. The award has recognised PA’s work for launching the Wellbeing Automated Call Service…

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