CyberSecurity World

Story : Aleksei Burkov, 29 of St. Petersburg, Russia, has pleaded guilty in a US court to running a site that sold stolen payment card data and administering a highly secretive crime forum that counted among its members, some of the most elite Russian cybercrooks. More Detail : Aleksei, who was extradited to the US from Israel in November, pleaded guilty on Thursday to running a website that helped people commit in credit-card fraud. He is accused of running a website that let people buy stolen credit-card numbers for anywhere from $3 to $60 . People used the numbers to make more than $20 million in fraudulent purchases. Prosecutors say Burkov even offered a money-back guarantee if a stolen card number no longer worked.  Company: Aleksei admitted to running CardPlanet, a site that sold more than 150,000 stolen credit card accounts, and to being the founder and administrator of DirectConnection , an underground community that attracted some of the...

2016 has been an interesting year for Cyber Crime with companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn, Lynda.com, TalkTalk (again), Ashley Maddison (being fined $1.6 million for 2015 data breach), KFC, Wells Fargo, MailChimp, AdultFriendFinder, MichaelPage; to name a few.  It's Christmas time and I don't want to be the bearer of bad news however it will get worse as the months/years go on and as companies we can only be prepared and react at our best ability. But a word to the wise; learn from others mistakes. Communication is the key here with customers and suppliers; that is internally and externally. Many bury their head in the sand but making sure you have a robust and up-to-date Incident response plan, Governance Risk and Compliance, Runbooks, Security awareness training, Solutions are being used, or needed etc.  EU GDPR will come into force by 2018 which gives another year to get the ducks in a row . Which could lead to fines of up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover f...

ICO Referendum result response An ICO spokesperson said: “The Data Protection Act remains the law of the land irrespective of the referendum result. “If the UK is not part of the EU, then upcoming EU reforms to data protection law would not directly apply to the UK. But if the UK wants to trade with the Single Market on equal terms we would have to prove 'adequacy' - in other words UK data protection standards would have to be equivalent to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation framework starting in 2018. “With so many businesses and services operating across borders, international consistency around data protection laws and rights is crucial both to businesses and organisations and to consumers and citizens. The ICO’s role has always involved working closely with regulators in other countries, and that would continue to be the case. “Having clear laws with safeguards in place is more important than ever given the growing digital economy, and we will be s...

The ICO recently carried out a study of the recent security incidents that have been reported or notified to the ICO. It's no shock that data breaches are on the rise with two-thirds of sectors studied reporting an increase in the first quarter compared with the same time a year ago, according to new ICO figures. The data protection watchdog, ICO have shown findings for the period 1 January – 31 March 2016 and uncovered some worrying statistics. Below are the key data security issues for each sector:  Data security incidents by type: The main data security issues within the health sector were: Data being posted or faxed to an incorrect recipient – 22% of incidents. Loss or theft of paperwork – 20% of incidents. The main issues for local government were: Data being posted or faxed to an incorrect recipient – 23% of incidents. Failure to redact data – 16% of incidents. Loss of theft of paperwork – 14% of incidents. The main issues for education were: Los...