Tag: respond | Page 2

Prince George’s Council Members Respond to Spike in Carjackings – NBC4 Washington

April 21, 2022/in Mobile Security

Carjackings have continued to spike in both D.C. and Prince George’s County, leading two county council members to call the crisis a state of emergency.

On April 11, a DoorDash driver was carjacked in District Heights, Maryland, on his first day on the job. Five days later, an Amazon Flex driver said she was in the Bellevue neighborhood in the District when two young people punched her and demanded her keys. And on Tuesday night, several people carjacked a person on H Street NE.

“This is really a carjacking state of emergency, this is not okay, this is not business as usual,” Mel Franklin, a Prince George’s County councilmember, said.

Franklin and fellow council member Deni Tavares say they’re worried about families who have to deal with carjacking crime.

“They’re just trying to live quiet lives and this is what they’re experiencing on a daily basis,” Tavares said.

In Prince George’s, 90 people were carjacked in 2019. That number nearly tripled to 269 in 2020 and spiked again last year to 381.

So far in 2022, if carjackings continue at the current pace, the figure will top last year’s number.

Over in D.C., there have been 161 carjackings so far in 2022, compared to 110 this time last year. That’s an increase of 46%.

“If people don’t feel safe, they will not live here. We have to restore a sense of safety and a sense of security,” Franklin said.

It’s why the council members are pushing for more investment in the community, such as the future Towne Square at Suitland Federal Center, which used to be an area with high crime.

“It’s this kind of investment that can make a supreme difference in reducing crime and helping uplift our communities,” Franklin said.

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Enterprise hits and misses – Tech companies respond to exploits, Amazon flexes for the holidays, and on-the-ground events get a safety playbook

December 13, 2021/in Internet Security

Lead story – Are on-the-ground events viable? Salesforce reveals lessons

One of my core pieces of advice for enterprise event planners borders on the obvious: move away from big annual shows, and give regional events a go. Salesforce was already on this, via a smaller Dreamforce in San Francisco and now, another in New York City.

Stuart breaks out the event lessons in Salesforce’s New York state of mind – Dreamforce shows real world events can be done in the US and here’s how.

Stuart shares the Salesforce method:

That’s where the next phase of Salesforce’s Dreampass offering comes in. Actually Benioff referred several times to what he called Safety Cloud, but the official branding appears to remain Dreampass. Regardless of the nomenclature, the idea remains the same – to enable organizations to create more trusted in-person events by:

Enabling organizations to scale collection and verification of COVID status.

Providing integrations with testing vendors, such as pharmacy chain CVS, as well as partners such as ‘touchless travel ID firm CLEAR and the non-profit public trust initiative The Commons Project.

Facilitating the creation of agile communications to keep event attendees informed about procedures and policies relating to events.

Centralizing data, including event registration, customer information and COVID status, for each attendee, then generating a secure multi-factor credential for the event.

Then there is the matter of verifying safety credentials, without compromising privacy. Stuart:

In addition, the recent acquisition of Credential Master is underpinning a move into Verifiable Credential Management (VCM) which allows partners to integrate with Dreampass and the wider Salesforce platform.

Some of these tools are Salesforce-specific. The methods are not. We’re still awaiting the curveballs of Omicron on the spring event calendar. But there’s no question that on-the-ground events are best served by regional approaches (limiting air travel, particularly international), and turning testing and/or vaccine validation into certified/trusted/digital routines. I still believe this should be paired with a superior virtual/hybrid approach, but that’s another story. (The…

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Editor’s Question: The best way to respond to a ransomware attack

August 2, 2021/in Internet Security

We asked three industry experts: Should organizations focus greater attention on putting systems in place that enable quick data recovery rather than pay a ransom in the event of a ransomware attack? Here are their responses:

Mark Lukie, Sales Engineer Manager – APJ, Barracuda

If your organization falls victim to a ransomware attack, the very last thing you should do is pay the cybercriminal’s demands.

Buckling under the threat and making payment, usually in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, may seem like the easiest way out of a dark corner, but it does nothing to help stem the rising tide of attacks occurring around the world. It also doesn’t guarantee you’ll actually regain access to your data.

**Mark Lukie, Sales Engineer Manager – APJ, Barracuda**

A further risk arises when cybercriminals copy sensitive data before they encrypt it. Even if the ransom is paid, they still have the option of selling this data to another party or simply releasing it in the hope of causing reputational damage to the victim.

The recent surge in ransomware attacks has been aided by the large number of people who have been forced to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. No longer protected by perimeter security as they are in the office, they’re more open to threats and attacks.

Ransomware is also proving very lucrative for criminals as a result of surging cryptocurrency prices. The digital currencies are the perfect payment mechanism as they are unregulated and difficult to trace.

Attacks are also increasing in number because of the relative ease with which they can be conducted. It’s even possible to make use of so-called ‘ransomware- As-a-Service’ which removes the need for any technical knowledge at all.

It should also be noted that paying a ransomware demand can also put an organization at a greater risk of further attacks. It is a winning situation for an hacker when they receive payment, so they are likely to target the same organization multiple times. As long as the opportunity for payout remains, the attacks will continue.

Preparation is better than payment

To avoid falling victim to an attack, and ensure systems can be recovered…

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White House working to respond to massive ransomware attack

July 5, 2021/in Internet Security

A massive ransomware attack that affected thousands of victims continued to cause chaos on Sunday as the White House pledged “full resources” to probe the breach.

Companies across the globe appear to have been affected through compromised software, asked to pay ransoms reported from $45,000 up to $5 million as the full breadth of Friday’s attack came into focus.

The ransomware hit Florida-based Kaseya and spread through a slew of companies, many which use its software to serve multiple customers.

“The level of sophistication here was extraordinary,” Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya, told The Associated Press.

About half the company’s 37,000 customers were victimized – but 70 percent of those were “managed service providers” who use Kaseya’s software to many others. In total, he estimated that thousands were affected, the AP said.

Although experts believe the attack originated from a group with ties to Russia, President Biden said Saturday it wasn’t yet clear if that was the case. He told reporters he’d ordered a “deep dive” by intelligence into the breach.

“And if it is, either with the knowledge of and/or a consequence of Russia, then I told Putin we will respond,” Biden said, according to a transcript of his comments.

Cyber crimes were a topic – and a major point of contention – between Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin when the two world leaders met in Europe during the G-7 summit.

The Russian-linked group REvil is suspected to be behind the attack, and may have struck during Independence Day weekend because it knew companies would have had limited staff due to the holiday, the AP said, citing experts.

Some companies may still not yet know they are victims until they return to work on Monday, the AP stated.

The White House said Sunday the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) were working with Kaseya to conduct outreach to victims.

Cybersecurity teams worked feverishly Sunday, July 4, 2021, to stem the impact of the single biggest global ransomware attack on record.

“Since Friday, the United States Government has been working across the…

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