Third party risk is not new. After all, over half of organizations (51%) were the victim of a third-party data breach in the past year. Third parties are opaque, transient, and harder to govern and limit access to.

The manufacturing sector continues to be one of the most appealing targets for hackers. It has the largest average payout for a ransomware attack and the consequences are too visible and disruptive to ignore. The result: companies are much more likely to pay ransoms and meet demands.

It only took two attacks for Brazilian e-commerce platform, Americanas.com, to lose millions. The attacks, over two days in February 2022, didn’t affect physical stores, but rendered the e-commerce side unavailable, and the total loss added up to $183 million.

The current trends in the cyber landscape are all rotating around one axis — access points. Hackers and cybersecurity professionals alike are all focusing on access points as their means of success — whether that’s to infiltrate or protect those entryways into critical systems, data, and applications. In order to secure access points, you first need to identify them.

It’s been one year since Colonial Pipeline was infamously hacked, creating fuel shortages, driving up gas prices, and creating a state of emergency. We’ve dug into this hack many times before, but looking back on one of the biggest critical infrastructure attacks shows us both why this cyber incident is so important and how organizations should move forward with their cybersecurity strategies after the many lessons learned from the attack.

The Financial industry is becoming a hot target for hackers and ransomware, and it’s no surprise — the industry does deal with money, after all. The sector is 300 times more likely to experience a cyberattack than any other industry, and the industry is absorbing the highest cost with an average of $18.3 million lost per cyberattack.  But it’s not just the Scrooge McDuck-style pools of coins and cash that cause hackers to turn their eyes to financial institutions. It’s the access. The industry has a vast amount of internal users that can quickly turn into insider threats. 

For a healthcare organization, monitoring access is critical, but that monitoring extends beyond just EMR data — to drug diversion. Drug diversion refers to the illegal distribution of prescription drugs, specifically referring to illegal distribution or abuse by medical professionals. According to the U.S. Department of Justice National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), the estimated cost of diversion to public and private medical insurers is more than $72 billion per year.

As Imprivata strengthens its portfolio with SecureLink, the Securelink Enterprise Access platform will now seamlessly integrate into Imprivata's PAM solution. This software collaboration now allows enterprise organizations to secure and efficiently manage all privileged access to critical assets. That’s a capability all organizations need to stay secure.

The Works, which sells books, toys, and other objects, has 520 stores across the UK. Recently, many of those locations had to temporarily close after a major cyberattack on the retailer. This kind of cybersecurity incident is becoming more and more common across the globe as cyberattacks soar and industries like retail find themselves digitizing faster than their cybersecurity architecture can keep up.

No attack vector is new. Ransomware, remote access breaches, phishing and other forms of cyber-espionage have been around for decades, yet we’re constantly coming up with new ways to solve them. Technology has evolved to meet the growing need to protect critical access points and assets from cyber-threats, but vulnerabilities are inherent.