Tag: supply chain
WEF predicts perfect storm for cybercrime
The World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025 reports that several compounding factors are creating an increasingly complex and risky business environment. These include the growing complexity of supply chains, rising geopolitical tensions, cybercriminal's increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), and the entry of traditional organized crime groups into cybercrime. Ransomware remains the top organizational cyber risk year on year, with 45 percent of respondents ranking it as a top concern in this year’s survey. Over half of the large organizations surveyed worldwide, 54 percent, identified supply chain challenges as the most challenging barrier to achieving cyber resilience, citing the increasing complexity of supply chains, coupled with a lack of visibility and oversight into the security levels of suppliers.
SMEs in urgent need of cybersecurity overhaul
In an exclusive interview with Cyber Intelligence, Brian Buiwe, Technology Specialist at Sage, explains how SMEs and other smaller organizations urgently need to re-address their approach to cybersecurity. There is a huge knowledge gap among C-suite executives of small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as among other professionals such as senior doctors and lawyers, where cybersecurity is concerned. Many do not yet grasp the urgent need for cybersecurity. The mainstream media has actually done a very poor job of keeping them informed of the growing threat facing all sectors.
How can companies deal with data overload?
Sanjaya Kumar, MD, is the CEO of cybersecurity company SureShield, Inc. Dr. Kumar has more than 25 years of healthcare compliance, risk management, and security experience. In an exclusive interview with Cyber Intelligence, he outlines the challenge presented by the current environment of data overload and some of the steps organizations should take to mitigate the associated risks from it.
The root of the problem for dentists
In an exclusive interview with Cyber Intelligence, Tom Terrenez, the chief executive of Medix Dental IT, describes the cyber-threats currently overwhelming many US dental practices. His warnings concerning data can be equally applied to doctors’ surgeries, upmarket beauticians and hairdressers, and other small businesses that provide personal services.
Cyber-piracy on the high seas
Escalating geopolitical instability in the South China Seas and The Red Sea are being seen as the root cause behind a rapid rise in cyber-attacks on commercial shipping, as well as a sharp increase in cyber-assisted piracy. “The risk has escalated significantly in the past year due to heightened geopolitical tensions and increased cyber capabilities of threat actors…The average cost per data breach now exceeds $545,000 for a shipping organization,” says Freight Right Global Logistics CEO Robert Khachatryan. According to C. Todd Doss, Senior Managing Director at Guidepost Solutions: “Over the past year, these risks have escalated notably. Reports indicate that cyber-attacks on maritime infrastructure and vessels increased by over 20% in 2023 compared to the previous year .”
Critical infrastructure under increased attack
France-based Schneider Electric became the latest utility company to succumb to a ransomware attack on January 17, when some of its business divisions serving several critical industries were taken down. Although access to the system was eventually re-opened on January 31st, the incident underlines the growing seriousness of cyber-attacks aimed at the West’s critical infrastructure. Schnieder Electric has an annual turnover of over 42 billion and employs over 150,000 people. The ransomware attack on Schneider Electric coincides with news that, in the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently neutralized a botnet controlled by a Chinese threat group. The White House had previously authorized the FBI to take down the botnet after federal agencies and private sector researchers had accused cyberespionage gang Volt Typhoon of a major campaign aimed at a wide range of the US’s critical infrastructure.
Supply-chain attacks impacted 54m victims in 2023
Last year saw exponential growth in the number of organizations impacted by supply-chain attacks, although the increase in the number of organizations targeted has remained slow. According to the 2023 data breach report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) the number of organizations impacted has surged by more than 2,600 percent since 2018, affecting over 54 million victims. “We must acknowledge the significant impact of Supply Chain Attacks and their effect on all organizations. A single supply chain attack can directly or indirectly impact hundreds or thousands of businesses that rely on the same vendor,” warns the ITRC. While supply chain attacks have been around for many years, the ability to automate and launch the attacks at scale accelerated in 2018. The MOVEit attack last year shows the scope and scale a Supply Chain Attack can have. According to the report, 102 entities were directly impacted by threat actors exploiting a MOVEit product. However, 1,271 organizations were indirectly affected when information stored in or accessed by a MOVEit product or service was compromised via a vendor or vendors.
US space industry vulnerable to supply-chain attacks
US intelligence agencies and the US Air Force issued a joint advisory warning space innovation and assets are now prime targets for cyber-espionage.