Cybercrimes alone cost the nation more than 1 trillion dollars globally, much more than the recorded 300 billion dollars of damages to a natural disaster back in 2017 according to analysts. Cyberattacks are now on top above the ranks on what does the biggest threat that businesses face today.
Six months have passed and six months are already on the books, there have been cybersecurity threats such as data breaches, hacking campaigns, supply chain manipulations, and harbingers of cyberwar. Before we see what the future brings, here are the summation of major cybersecurity incidents so far this year.
Iran’s Attack on U.S. Government Infrastructure
Iran increased its offensive when it comes to cybersecurity attacks on the U.S. government infrastructure as the dispute between the two nations grows even more. Hostility has been escalating since the U.S. pulled back from the nuclear deal back in 2015, and tension elevated when Iran shot down an unmanned U.S. drone.
When Iran shot down the drone, it was an incident that almost made the U.S. have a military strike against Iran. Now both sides are frustrated to know what the other side’s thoughts are. It was unknown if any of the hackers targeted networks with legitimate emails but containing malicious software.
The First American
The First American company specializes in mortgage settlements and title insurance. The First American recently exposed hundreds of millions of records of the customers, and all can be accessed through the internet. Which also includes complete personal information and especially their corresponding Social Security numbers.
Although there were no known data that was taken, the scale of this cybersecurity crisis was enormous. Exposing approximately 885 million records from an unidentified number of customers.
This tactic could have granted the extortion of real estate transaction records dating back to the year 2003. These kinds of records would expose a wide variety of personal information on its customers which includes names, bank accounts, driver’s licenses, and other crucial information that can be leveraged by the hackers.
Attacks on the Supply Chain
The widespread of cybercrime has been escalating year by year. Today, attacks on supply chains have been increasing incredibly compared to 2018. The cyberattacks increased by 50 percent due to the reason that the supply chain is the most vulnerable when it comes to cyber-attacks.
Keeping the supply chains away from cyberattacks has been more and more problematic. Supply chain areas that are vulnerable include mobile banking, e-mails, and the cloud. Cyberattacks take in the form of attacks on software where malicious code is established, by infecting and modifying the foundations the software was built from.
Ransomware
There are already some ransomware groups that are targeted appearing over the last two years, and now the number of people and organizations that are targeted by ransomware has recently multiplied tremendously.
A fruitful targeted ransomware attack can be disastrous for an individual or an organization. Hackers commonly attempt to encrypt several machines as possible, targeting ordinary computers as well as servers that could make the afflicted organization critically obstructed.
Customs and Border Protection Contractor Perceptics
The United States Customs and Border Protection has ceased all federal contracts with a surveillance contractor. Because the surveillance contractor was suspected to be suffering from a data breach. And the Perceptics, a company that sells border control equipment and license plate scanners is now restricted from contracting to other agencies.
The officials concluded that the cause of these cybersecurity breaches was having evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business integrity and honesty. But with such suspension can have serious consequences for surveillance companies that rely on federal contracts for the extent of their business.
Breach of American Medical Collection Agency[1]
The American Medical Collection agency is a medical billing firm, and it was recently responsible for eight months worth of data being breached. The breach exposed the personal information of nearly 20 million Americans and has already filed for bankruptcy with the loss of its four largest customers.
And on the fourth of June, news broke out that another major client of the American Medical Collection Agency, which was LabCorp, blamed the company for a cybersecurity breach that affected 7.7 million of its customers. The breach created a “cascade of events” that resulted in enormous expenses were beyond the capability of the debtor to take.
Takeaway
There’s one thing the experts agree on and that is cybercrime is here to stay. And as the dependence on technology keeps on growing, cybersecurity threats may get even worse as cybercrime has been escalating exponentially in recent years.
Companies and governments have been struggling to hire enough qualified experts to protect against the growing threat. The severe shortage of cybersecurity professionals continues to be the cause for the alarm since a small digital workforce to battle the ever-improving cybersecurity threats emerging around the world.
[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/american-medical-collection-agency/
