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Robert Boyce on Accenture's Strategy for Assessing the Behavior of Ransomware Gangs
Accenture Global Cyber Resilience Lead Robert Boyce outlines why organizations must assess the stability of ransomware groups before deciding how to respond to extortion threats. He outlines how trustworthiness of ransomware gangs can affect the likelihood of receiving decryption keys after payment.

CrowdStrike Probes Largest Deal in History Weeks After Causing Massive IT Outage
CrowdStrike is in talks to acquire Houston-based patch management and vulnerability remediation startup Action1 for close to $1 billion, co-founder and CEO Alex Vovk told employees in an email Wednesday. This would be the largest acquisition in the endpoint security vendor's history.

SEC 'Proposed Specific Settlement Terms' But Defense Unlikely to Accept, Judge Told
Federal regulators and SolarWinds are eyeing a truce weeks after a judge dismissed most claims related to misleading investors about the company's security practices and risks. SEC lawyer Christopher Bruckmann said his team "proposed specific settlement terms," but the defense is unlikely to accept.

Crowded Leak Site May Be a Weakness and Fewer New Players a Sign of Higher Quality
How many ransomware victims pay their attackers a ransom precisely to avoid having their names listed - or their stolen data dumped - on a ransomware group's data leak blog? We don't know, but leak site posts don't correlate well with security firms' telemetry data.

Aging Technology and Rising Competition Have Created a Need for Greater Investment
The owners of eSentire are exploring a potential sale that could value the company at about $1 billion and attract the interest of private equity firms. The company is hoping to command a valuation equivalent to more than seven times its annual recurring revenue of about $150 million.

Officials Say the Olympic Games Saw 140 Cyberattacks. None Were Successful.
France’s cyber defense agency teamed up with governments and security experts from across the globe to identify and mitigate a historic level of both physical and cyber threats following years of preparation, experts tell Information Security Media Group.

1.3 Million Individuals Being Notified Their Social Security Numbers Were Stolen
Background check firm Jericho Pictures, which does business as National Public Data, is notifying 1.3 million individuals that their personal information was stolen via a December 2023 breach of its systems. The stolen information was listed for sale on a cybercrime market beginning in April.

Cybercriminal Gang RansomHub Claims It Leaked 700 Gigabytes of Lab's Stolen Data
Florida drug testing medical laboratory American Clinical Solutions told federal regulators that 300,000 individuals are caught up in a hacking incident now that criminal gang RansomHub has published 700 gigabytes worth of data stolen from the lab's network.

FBI Says Iran, Russia Ramping Up Influence Operations Ahead of National Vote
The FBI confirmed recent reports that Iran hacked into former President Donald Trump’s campaign, saying in a Monday statement the country was attempting "to stoke discord and undermine confidence" in the U.S. democratic process through online influence operations and other malicious efforts.

Involving Law Enforcement After Ransomware Attacks Drives Down Costs, Study Finds
Data breaches continue to grow more costly, with the average cost of a breach hitting an all-time high of $4.9 million, driven by greater business disruption and post-breach customer support and remediation expenses, according to the latest annual Cost of a Data Breach Report from IBM.

Andres Andreu Discusses How to Make an Organization Secure - and Successful
To make cybersecurity a business enabler, cybersecurity teams need to focus on opening things up in a secure fashion so that the functionality and productivity of the business can flourish. Hearst's Andres Andreu discusses the areas in which this can be done.

Help Organizations Build Robust Defenses Against Human-Centric Threats
Social engineering, which involves manipulating individuals into sharing confidential data or performing actions that compromise security, is a big threat. As organizations realize the importance of addressing human-centric security risks, the demand for social engineering defense experts will rise.

Microsoft's Tool Requires Physical Access, a 'Time-Consuming and Laborious Task'
Microsoft's statement that a faulty CrowdStrike update affected less than 1% of active Windows systems doesn't tell the full story, since large organizations in critical sectors make up a disproportionate part of the user base, as the outages in healthcare, transportation and banking demonstrate.

Tips on Managing Public Relations in the Face of a Cyber Incident
Cybersecurity incidents are not just technical problems. They are also major public relations challenges. Effective IT and cybersecurity leadership during a crisis can significantly affect your company's reputation, stakeholder trust and overall recovery - and have a big impact on your career.

What kind of people do cybersecurity for a living? In the past, there was a formula potential practitioners followed, but today there are many ways to get into the field and having people from diverse backgrounds is valued. The Curry brothers discuss the cybersecurity profession.

The deployment of an asset management platform is helping Main Line Health gain deeper visibility and better security over the 100,000-plus medical devices and IoT gear used throughout the group's multiple hospitals and medical facilities, said CISO Aaron Weismann, who discusses the implementation.

Healthcare groups should consider several key points about a recent Texas federal court ruling and its impact on the use of online tracker technology on the healthcare websites of HIPAA-regulated organizations, said privacy attorney Iliana Peters of the law firm Polsinelli.

The interconnectedness of medical devices, which generate data that can be distributed to multiple systems that are often managed by different policies, presents privacy concerns that device manufacturers must address, said Adam Hesse, CEO of Full Spectrum.