On December 29, 2016, President Obama issued a new executive order that expands the authority of the US Secretary of Treasury to impose sanctions on individuals and entities for cyber-attacks to maintain cybersecurity reports the Business Advisor. This action marks the first-time sanctions have been imposed under the Cybersecurity Sanctions Program established on April 1, 2015, with the designation of nine entities and individuals. The new executive order specifically sanctioned five entities and four individuals in Russia for cyber operations aimed at the US election. The State Department announced that…
Read MoreTag: cyber crime
WhatsApp to End Support Of Devices With Old Versions Of iOS And Android
Instant messaging App Whatsapp, will pull plug for devices running the older versions of mobile operating systems by the end of 2016. WhatsApp, the leading instant messaging client in the entire world, connects people globally without geographical barriers. In February this year, the application administrators announced that its services are being used by 1 billion users across the world but will be unavailable for some users. According to Apple, 63% of iOS devices are running on iOS 10, 29 % on iOS 9 and only 8 % on previous versions of…
Read MoreBanks remains top cybercrime targets globally
As digital technology develops, the business organizations continue to experience more transformations and disruptions exposing themselves to more opportunities and threats. Attacks against the finance industry are becoming increasingly sophisticated and highly targeted. The economic crime has as well gone digital as every sector of commerce digitalizes. According to a U.S. cybersecurity report released by IBM, the financial-services industry ranked third in number of cyberattacks in 2015, after health care and manufacturing. Reports also indicate that there were 2.46 million cyber incidents and 2.11 million victims of cyber crime in…
Read MoreLinkedIn banned in Russia
LinkedIn, a social media platform for professional has been blocked in Russia following failure to comply with personal data storage regulations which came into effect September 2015. Russia’s communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has reportedly added the social network to a blacklist of websites making LinkedIn the first major social network to be blocked in Russia . The social network had been found to be in violation of a rule requiring data on Russian citizens to be stored on servers inside the country. As a result, internet service providers in Russia will have…
Read MoreU.S. tech look to Africa for developers
Tech companies founded in the United States are setting up software development centers in Nigeria and Kenya, where a number of young developers has led to growing tech communities. Microsoft has launched its Microsoft 4 Afrika initiative, aiming to help empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers and others to make their ideas a reality. Steve Case, the AOL founder, and his wife Jean, Generation Investment Management and Sir Richard Branson have provided $19 million to Kenyan pay-as-you-go energy start-up M-KOPA Solar. Andela, which has attracted $24 million of funding from a scheme led by…
Read MoreBrookings Study estimates cost of internet shutdowns in 2015 at $2.4 billion
Whenever there’s a shutdown of internet access or restrictions placed on an app, we shake our heads disapprovingly because we know it’s a fundamentally bad idea to do that. But what exactly is the cost of those shutdowns? A new study from the Brookings Institution suggests well over $2 billion over the last year. The study, by Brookings analyst Darrell West, is a very rough estimate of these costs. We’re talking back-of-napkin rough — well, assuming you were sitting at the bar with MIT and World Bank economists. Essentially, West…
Read MoreU.S. Federal bank regulators outline new cyber security standards to stem attacks
U.S. bank regulators on Wednesday outlined cyber security standards meant to protect financial markets and consumers from online attacks against the nation’s leading financial firms. Leading banks will be expected to use the most sophisticated anti-hacking tools on the market and to be able to recover from any attack within two hours, said officials briefing reporters on the plan. The rules, which will be finalized after industry input, is meant to raise cyber security to a top priority for corporate executives and boards, according to the banking agencies. Banks with…
Read MoreInterview: Hootsuite’s CEO Lessons from Getting Hacked on Social Media
“Hey, it’s OurMine Team, we are just testing your security, please send us a message.” Earlier this summer, that message was blasted out to my followers on Twitter… only I didn’t send it. I had been hacked. It was embarrassing. I run Hootsuite, a social media management company that prides itself on world-class security for our customers. How could this happen? What did I do wrong? In the following days, I learned that Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, had fallen victim to the same hackers. And not long before that,…
Read MoreInternet companies petrified after hackers release code behind one of the most powerful online attacks
Internet companies are bracing for more trouble after hackers released the code behind one of the most powerful online attacks ever, which harnessed as many as one million internet-connected devices to knock a blogger offline. The malicious software takes advantage of weak security on video recorders, routers and other internet-connected devices, taking control of the systems and forming them into a collection of attacking machines, called a “botnet.” It can then disable a victim’s internet servers by flooding them with an overwhelming amount of internet traffic. The botnet code was…
Read MoreMassive data breach hits 500 million Yahoo accounts
Information from at least 500 million Yahoo accounts was stolen from the company in 2014, the company said Thursday, indicating it believes a state-sponsored actor was behind the hack the Sunnyvale, California-based company confirmed. The theft may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, Yahoo said. Even in an Internet-dependent population accustomed to the regular occurrence of massive data breaches, the size of this one — thought to be the largest ever in terms of user accounts — is attention-grabbing. And the possibility that another…
Read More