Critical Infrastructure Protection


Today’s interdependent and interconnected world requires joint efforts and holistic approaches to protect critical infrastructure assets from the growing number of attacks and to address ever-evolving cyber threats to government, energy, healthcare, education, banking, transportation, telecommunication and other critical sectors.

With a dedicated section focusing on Critical Infrastructure protection, we aim to enhance cooperation and engage security professionals through news, articles and in-depth analysis of emerging threats and technologies.


NEWS

  • UK government seeks advice on defending against supply-chain cyberattacks

    May 17, 2021

    Today, the UK government has announced a call for advice on defending against software supply-chain attacks and ways to strengthen IT Managed Service Providers (MSPs) across the country. The move comes after last week when President Biden had issued an executive order to increase cybersecurity defenses across the U.S. The government’s invitation to provide feedback that will ...

  • ‘We won’t pay ransom,’ says Ireland after attack on health service

    May 17, 2021

    Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) has ruled out giving in to hackers’ demands as the country’s healthcare and social services continue to deal with the disruption caused by a significant ransomware attack that occurred a few days ago. The HSE has now confirmed that a ransom has been sought by the attackers, although the exact amount ...

  • DarkSide ransomware servers reportedly seized, operation shuts down

    May 14, 2021

    The DarkSide ransomware operation has allegedly shut down after the threat actors lost access to servers and their cryptocurrency was transferred to an unknown wallet. This news was shared by a threat actor known as ‘UNKN’, the public-facing representative of the rival REvil ransomware gang, in a forum post first discovered by Recorded Future researcher Dmitry ...

  • Ireland: Health service IT systems forced to shut down after ‘fairly sophisticated’ cyber attack

    May 14, 2021

    Health service IT systems have been shutdown today following a cyber attack that the HSE believes was carried out by international criminals seeking to extort money . The HSE said the main attack began at around 4.30am on Friday and that IT staff switched off systems as a “precaution” in order to protect data and give ...

  • How UK National Health Service learned the lessons of WannaCry to protect hospitals from attack

    May 13, 2021

    Four years ago, the UK’s National Health Service suddenly found itself one of the most high-profile victims of a global cyberattack. On 12 May 2017, WannaCry ransomware hit organisations around the world, but hospitals and GP surgeries throughout England and Scotland were particularly badly affected. A significant number of services were disrupted as malware encrypted computers ...

  • Colonial Pipeline paid close to $5 million in ransomware blackmail payment

    May 13, 2021

    Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid the ransomware group responsible for a cyberattack last week close to $5 million to decrypt locked systems. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that two people close to the matter said a blackmail demand was agreed to within hours of the cyberattack that has impacted the fuel giant’s systems for close to a week. On ...

  • Incremental improvements are not enough as Biden signs order boosting US cyber posture

    May 13, 2021

    United States President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to boost the cyber posture of the federal government. The order points to recent incidents including the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, Exchange vulnerabilities that led to the FBI removing web shells from US servers, and the SolarWinds attack. The order said the federal government must ...

  • New ransomware: CISA warns over FiveHands file-encrypting malware variant

    May 12, 2021

    The US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned organizations to be cautious of a relatively new ransomware variant called FiveHands. FiveHands ransomware has been around since January 2021, but CISA said it was “aware of a recent, successful cyberattack against an organization” using this strain of file-encrypting malware. Read more… Source: ZDNet  

  • DarkSide Ransomware: Best Practices for Preventing Business Disruption from Ransomware Attacks

    May 11, 2021

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are aware of a ransomware attack affecting a critical infrastructure (CI) entity—a pipeline company—in the United States. Malicious cyber actors deployed DarkSide ransomware against the pipeline company’s information technology (IT) network. At this time, there is no indication that the entity’s ...