iNews - Around The World This Week

1)     3 Ways Hackers Steal Your Company's Mobile Data - The most effective data exfiltration prevention strategies are those that are as rigorous in vetting traffic entering the network as they are traffic leaving it. It's the unfortunate reality of the cybersecurity threat landscape today that malicious actors are advancing their tactics at a breakneck pace, finding new vulnerabilities in network defenses to execute attacks faster than IT teams can keep up.

2)     ANZ Bank suffers 10-hour internet banking outage - ANZ Bank suffered a major outage of its internet banking service with users reporting problems for much of Monday. The outage appears to have started just after 10am Sydney time and was not resolved until just before 8pm - resulting in 10 hours of downtime. Earlier, users took to social media to complain about the issues, which the bank said on its Twitter account were “intermittent” and the IT team was working to fix “as a matter of priority”.

3)     Cyberattacks on Israeli banks rose in last six months - Israel's banking regulator warned banks and their customers on Sunday to be more vigilant against cyber criminals following a rise in hacking attempts in recent months. "In the last half year, we have seen an increase in attempts at fraud via phishing, aimed at banking system customers with the intent to steal funds from their accounts," the central bank said, adding that the attacker initially tries to steal the customer's login and other personal details aimed at transferring funds between accounts.

4)     Cryptocurrency Mining Malware Infected Over Half-Million PCs Using NSA Exploit - 2017 was the year of high profile data breaches and ransomware attacks, but from the beginning of this year, we are noticing a faster-paced shift in the cyber threat landscape, as cryptocurrency-related malware is becoming a popular and profitable choice of cyber criminals. According to the Proofpoint researchers, cybercriminals are using at least 25 machines to scan the internet to find vulnerable Windows computers.

5)     Cyberattack Impersonates FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center - A new cyberattack scams people into providing personal data and downloading malicious files by impersonating the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a division of the FBI intended to give the public a reliable means of reporting suspected illegal activity online. Threat actors trick victims into sharing personal information with fake IC3 messages laced with malware.

6)     APIs Pose 'Mushrooming' Security Risk - As APIs grow in prominence, top security concerns include bots and authentication. The application economy has now become the API economy. And as the importance of application programming interfaces (APIs) grows within the enterprise, organizations must keep their security top-of-mind, lest they put the entire software stack at risk as APIs deployed without security measures expose organizations to yet another class of attack vectors.

7)     3 Simple Steps to Securing Your ICS Systems against Digital Threats - We live in a world where connectivity is key. It’s brought conveniences to our personal lives, and organizations are adopting it into the industrial world to boost productivity. Industrial control systems (ICS), which manage utilities like water, gas, and electricity, are one such example of this ongoing trend. Organizations are putting ICS systems online so that jobs once carried out manually can now be carried out remotely or with the help of automation. ICS systems are a key target for cybercriminals. Security should therefore be a priority; given the importance of ICS, one would assume these systems would be running the most secure technology available. This is not the case. Much of the equipment is at risk of aging out, that is, requiring replacement or upgrade with very little security.

8)     Infrastructure-Based Security Vulnerabilities Put Your Business in Peril - With dozens of breaches and millions left violated, 2017 has witnessed a historic amount of hacking. This year has been stained with numerous hacking incidents, including WannaCry, Petya and Cloudbleed. Of these many cases, the Equifax data breach can be crowned the most significant hack of the year, having exposed the personal data of nearly 148 million people.

9)     How to Utilize the Cloud to Mitigate Cybersecurity Risks to Security Hardware - Today, cybersecurity is on all our minds. Every other day, we get news of another cyberattack. As more organizations struggle to keep up with the onslaught of these new threats, many are asking: “What can we do to strengthen our cybersecurity posture?” When we want to quantify it, consider the concept of risk. In its simplest form, the risk associated with a system is the impact of it malfunctioning, multiplied by the likelihood that a malfunction will occur.

Can We Be Smarter Than The Smart Cities We’re Building? - Imagine a world where everything is connected. All information and communication technologies are integrated into a single, consolidated platform. With the rapid increase in smart city capabilities, this idea may soon become our reality. The smart cities vision is to seamlessly integrate information and communication technologies with the internet of things (IoT) to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance communications between networks. The end goal is to enable cities to leverage their IoT devices to create a more cohesive and connected environment. As more locations embark on adopting the smart city vision, reliance on data accuracy and speed of transmission will continue to grow, allowing all infrastructures to be connected through a single network.