Breach Prevention Blog

Welcome to the Leading from Within series. Here, we showcase leaders from within Morphisec as we discuss emerging topics and trends dear to the cybersecurity community. From ransomware variants to phishing scams, from attacks on healthcare institutions to the downsides of digitizing your workforce--we’ve got you covered. We hope this series provides valuable information as you secure your cloud-based, as well as tangible, assets. 

Editor's Note: This is a guest blog from IT Central Station.

Brian Wagner, the senior network engineer at Wilson County Schools in North Carolina, needed a threat prevention solution that would help improve his overall endpoint protection process while also supporting his existing security solutions. In particular, he wanted more protection than he could get with Microsoft Windows Defender, which is included in his Windows systems.

Wow, what a week. From new incentives to become a cyber defender to new targets for threat actors, this week had it all. We start with the $10 million dollar information bounty currently offered by the US Government and we end with the startling news of the Trickbot comeback. See? This week was wild--keep reading for the News In Review.

Introduction

On July 2, 2021, Morphisec Keep, our Cloud Workload Protection Platform, successfully identified and prevented a REvil Ransomware infection within some of our customer domains. This attack was automatically blocked in real time due to Morphisec's proactive protection mechanism, which resulted in no harm to the customer.

Welcome to the latest edition of security news in review. In this biweekly roundup, we collect news on attacks and threats that may have an impact on your business. Today, we have stories on REvil encrypting hundreds of organizations at once, the Babuk Locker ransomware being used in a brand new campaign, the PrintNightmare vulnerability’s potential impact on domain controllers, and reporting that Microsoft digitally signed a rootkit driver.

Read on for the news. 

Cybercriminals have pounced on the COVID-19 crisis, made clear by the number of ransomware attacks increasing by at least 150 percent in 2020. As a follow-on consequence, organizations have started purchasing cyber insurance policies to hedge against the financial risk of a successful cyber attack. 

Zero trust security has become a major topic of conversation in the cybersecurity community. With good reason too: zero trust as a cyber security methodology helps minimize the attack surface, traditionally when it comes to identity and the network, to ensure that malicious actors have a harder time creating a foothold in critical infrastructure. 

This week in security news in review, we have reporting on the Avaddon ransomware gang closing down, Google releasing a new framework about supply chain attack prevention, and a new malware that prevents you from visiting piracy sites. These and other stories in this week’s edition of the cyber news you need to know. 

In the early morning of May 14th this year, security staff attached to the National Cyber Security Centre in Ireland noticed suspicious activity within IT networks connected to the country's Health Service Executive, the HSE. Hours later, IT systems in dozens of hospitals, clinics, and health providers -- all serving the country's population of nearly five million people -- had been shut down with what turned out to be a devastating Conti ransomware attack. 

This week we have good news and bad news. On the one hand, a COO was caught and charged with potentially attacking a rival medical institution. A stolen data marketplace was shut down and bugs were found (all around). However, there has also been an increase in high-profile cyber-attacks. Keep reading to get this week’s top cybernews.