Industry News: ESG5

2019-04-23

TheWashingtonTimes: Financial losses caused by cybercrimes reported to the FBI nearly doubled in 2018 over the year before, according to a government report released Monday. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 351,936 complaints in 2018 involving incidents that caused combined losses totaling $2.71 billion, the office said in its annual report. By comparison, the IC3 received 301,580 complaints in 2017 totaling $1.42 billion in losses...

2019-04-23

Metro: CYBER attacks against businesses have rocketed with six out of ten companies reporting at least one incident last year, a survey has revealed. The financial cost related to cyber crime also sharply increased, with the average loss reported at £283,000 — up nearly two thirds on the previous year. While large firms remain the most likely to be targeted, the number of small and medium sized businesses affected by the crime also rose significantly in 2018...

2019-04-21

TheIrishTimes: More than a third of people in the UK believe that losing money or personal information over the internet is now “unavoidable”, a survey has found, in a further sign of growing public concern about online privacy. The research, carried out by Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, part of digital intelligence agency GCHQ, also revealed that 70 per cent of the public believe they will be a victim of cyber crime in the next two years...

The target: Orbitz, a subsidiary of online travel agency Expedia Inc.

The take: Payment card information and personal data such as billing addresses, phone numbers, and emails.

The attack vector: About 880,000 payment cards had been hit by a security breach. The attacker may have accessed personal information that was submitted for certain purchases made during an entire year.

Read more...

2019-04-15

Fortune: It’s no secret that private equity has been on a cybersecurity kick as of late—and for good reason. With online attacks and digital fraud only becoming more prevalent, global spending on technology to protect sensitive data and information is expected to reach an unprecedented $124 billion this year, according to research firm Gartner...

2019-04-16

Forbes: The arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange marks the first step toward bringing to court one of the most prominent cyber crimes in American history. With cyber-threat actors making a living off of hacked information, it should come as no surprise that U.S. government intelligence agencies are shifting focus and resources to address the issue, which includes $15 billion set aside from the President’s budget for cybersecurity-related activities...

2019-04-16

Reuters: Russia’s lower house of parliament approved on Tuesday the third reading of a draft law that aims to increase Moscow’s sovereignty over its Internet segment and defend against foreign meddling, Interfax agency reported. The bill must now be approved by parliament’s upper house and the presidency before passing into law. The bill’s authors said earlier that the measures are needed to defend the country after the United States adopted what they described as aggressive new cyber security policies last year...

2019-04-15

ZDNet:  Pregnancy club Bounty UK Limited has been fined £400,000 for illegally sharing and selling information belonging to 14 million individuals without their explicit consent. The fine was imposed by the UK's data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Personal data relating to pregnancy, new mothers, mothers-to-be, and the birth dates & sex of children were shared. The ICO said the data was collected from those who were "potentially vulnerable."...

2019-04-11

Nypost:  City Hall’s bumbling tech czar previously held a similar job in Atlanta — which was crippled by a cyberattack shortly after he left for the Big Apple. Samir Saini, who’s enmeshed in a scandal over an entirely preventable crash of the city’s in-house wireless network, was Atlanta’s chief information officer when Mayor Bill de Blasio named him head of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications in January 2018...

2019-04-15

ZDNet:  A hacker who spoke with ZDNet in February about wanting to put up for sale the data of over one billion users is getting dangerously close to his goal after releasing another 65.5 million records last week and reaching a grand total of 932 million records overall. The hacker's name is Gnosticplayers, and he's responsible for the hacks of 44 companies, including last week's revelations...