Industry News: ESG5

2019-04-29

Euronews: Losses from the theft of cryptocurrencies from exchanges and fraud-related activities surged in the first quarter of the year to $1.2 billion (920.67 million pounds), or 70 percent of the level for all of 2018, cybersecurity firm CipherTrace said on Tuesday. The value of losses from crime in the digital currency sector in 2018 hit $1.7 billion. But cryptocurrency crime has ballooned as the market has slowed down, prices have plunged and business activity has stalled...

2019-04-29

VentureBeat: Red Canary, a five-year-old Denver, Colorado-based company developing cloud-based security services, today announced that it’s secured $34 million in growth equity financing led by Summit Partners, with participation from existing investors Access Venture Partners and Noro-Moseley Partners. It follows on the heels of a $6.25 million venture series in May 2018 and brings the company’s total raised to $48.9, and will fuel the expansion of Red Canary’s services and team in the coming months, according to CEO and cofounder Brian Beyer...

2019-04-29

TheSydneyMorningHerald: The Morrison government will scale up the cyber security teams that defend Australia’s communications networks in a $156 million election pledge that includes new scholarships and recruitment programs. On alert for attacks from foreign agencies and criminals, the government wants to expand its online security workforce across several departments while using public funds to encourage more young Australians to study computer science...

2019-05-01

BobsGuide: Hackers are exploiting inherent weaknesses in mature hedge funds on a daily basis, say a security vendor and the chief technology officer of an established fund, leading to huge boosts in cybersecurity spending. “Hedge funds are being targeted simply because of cash movements where frequent large transfers are normal at a small business that doesn’t necessarily have all the controls in place,” says Jason Elmer, managing partner at Drawbridge, the cybersecurity consultancy...

2019-04-29

Forbes: Research published on Monday by cyber threat intelligence company Intsights paints a bleak picture for cybersecurity across the global financial services industry. According to the report, more than 25% of all malware attacks hit banks and other financial services organizations, more than any other industry, and there were huge year-on-year increases in the numbers of compromised credit cards (212%), in credential leaks (129%) and in malicious apps (102%)...

The target: Microsoft’s personal e-mail service, Outlook.com.

The take: E-mail accounts under the Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, and MSN.com domains were compromised – while Microsoft has offered that ‘only 6%’ of accounts were compromised, they would not confirm the number of accounts that percentage represents. While they initially denied that the attackers had access to customers’ inboxes beyond contacts, folder names, and subject lines, it was later confirmed that email contents could have been viewed.

The attack vector: Attackers were able access Microsoft’s infrastructure by compromising the credentials of a customer support representative.

Read more...

2019-04-22

DailyHeraldBusiness: Data breaches are constantly in the news and most companies know they should be concerned about privacy and the security of their data, or at least recognize this is an important and complex area. However, most family offices are not sure how to start addressing their concerns, or worse, don't view the family office as a target...

2019-04-20

BostonHerald: A British cybersecurity researcher credited with stopping a worldwide computer virus has pleaded guilty to developing malware to steal banking information. Federal prosecutors in Wisconsin and Marcus Hutchins’ attorneys said in a joint court filing Friday that the 24-year-old agreed to plead guilty to developing malware called Kronos and conspiring to distribute it from 2012 to 2015. In exchange for his plea to those charges, prosecutors dismissed eight more...

2019-04-23

Fortune: California Senator Kamala Harris warned that cyber attacks are becoming a “new form of war” Monday night during CNN’s town hall, ominously stating that it will be “a war without blood”—one for which the United States is not prepared...

2019-04-18

ArabianBusiness: Cybercrime is projected to cost $8 trillion to businesses globally in the next five years, according to UAE-based cyber security firm DarkMatter which is responsible for protecting the IT infrastructure and technologies of Dubai Expo 2020. Dr Karim Sabbagh, CEO of DarkMatter Group, told a regional internal audit conference in Abu Dhabi on Thursday that irreparable reputational damages are on the rise with the escalating regulations increasingly penalising failures to tackle cybercrime...