Petronella Cybersecurity News

Healthcare providers in the US aren’t the only ones dealing with increased cyber attacks. A new report shows that while the National Health Service (NHS – the UK’s Government-funded medical and health care services provider) was compromised over 200 times by ransomware attacks from 2014 to 2017, the measures they took to fortify their cyber […]

“Nothing in life is free.” A lot of people use Avast’s antivirus to protect their computer.  It costs you nothing out of pocket and it’s a pretty effective little cybersecurity tool. Sound to good to be true right? That’s because it is. Did you know that, by default, Avast not only collects your browser activity, […]

Not only has it been leaked that the UN was hacked, but there’s also evidence suggesting they tried to cover it up. What We Know According to a confidential internal document that was leaked to The New Humanitarian and shared with the  Associated Press (AP), more than 40 servers in Geneva and Vienna were compromised.  […]

As if having your medical data compromised wasn’t bad enough… Now your medical secrets are being held hostage! It’s a breezy but sunny afternoon.  You’re going about your day, minding your own business when you receive a random text message from an unknown number saying that they have personal medical information about you that they will […]

Two billion dollars sure does sound like a lot of money for a class action lawsuit, but when you are a major credit reporting agency whose negligence compromised over 147 million people’s personal information? It’s really not.  Click here to file a claim free, online, if you were a potential victim of the massive Equifax […]

Among all the security features available today, two-factor authentication (2FA) is by far one of the most important, and apparently, Google is aware of that!  In their most recent iOS “Smart Lock” app update, they included a feature that will allow you to use your iPhone as a physical 2FA device.  After you set it […]

I know you are all aware of what I’m about to tell you, but just in case you momentarily forgot, I’m going to refresh your memory… Every year, Microsoft stops supporting select versions of its software.  What this means is that they discontinue any sort of security updates or patches.   What does this mean for […]

In case you were ever wondering if your practice needs to encrypt its ePHI? Let the $3 million HIPAA penalty paid last month by the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), one of the largest medical systems in NY State, serve as a warning. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights […]

Directly on the heels of LockerGoga and MegaCortex, a different strand of ransomware, Maze, which was first discovered nearly a year ago, started to target private companies in the US in November, and the FBI wants to make sure you know about it. Just two days after issuing an alert for LockerGoga and MegaCortex, the […]

Ibrahim Balic, a security researcher, recently exposed a flaw in Twitter’s app that allowed to match unique Twitter user accounts with 17 million phone numbers months ago.  He was able to accomplish this by uploading large lists of phone numbers by way of Twitter’s “Contacts Upload” feature that is available on the social media giant’s […]

It seems like something that only happens in movies and TV shows: It’s Friday the 13th.  You, your colleagues, your entire department, the entire city, in fact, receives the same command to power down their computers immediately and disconnect all devices from the network. But this wasn’t a movie and it wasn’t a TV show… […]

“Eight is Enough” A great, wholesome, family show from the late 70’s and early 80’s.  Also: what Sentara Hospital, with over 300 facilities across the states of North Carolina and Virginia, is telling the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) after being on the receiving end last month of this […]

There is a reason hackers have started targeting hospitals and medical practices.  Not only is their cyber security known to be woefully lacking (despite the best efforts of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] and HIPAA regulations), but the electric Patient Health Information (ePHI) can literally be life and death.  Meaning?  The […]

Researchers at Trustwave recently discovered a malicious spam campaign.  The email comes as an executable file via email with a tell-tale two sentence subject line that reads “Install Latest Microsoft Windows Update now! Critical Microsoft Windows Update!” There is only one sentence to the actual email itself. Disguised as a .jpg, the file really contains […]

Looters broke into a Durham health clinic sometime after the downtown gas explosion on April 10th that affected over 20 businesses, injured 25 people, and caused the death of two people. The subsequent theft of clinic property has prompted the clinic to notify patients that their information, including diagnoses and treatment information may have been […]

PureLocker, an unusual form of ransomware that attacks enterprise servers, has gone undetected for some time but has recently been revealed by cybersecurity analysts at Intezer and IBM X-Force.  What makes PureLocker so unique is that it’s written in PureBasic programming language.  Malicious software written in PureBasic is difficult for most security systems to detect.  […]

HIPAA Violations have been making headlines recently, and for good reason. Fines for violations can be crippling to companies, and the more mobile our data becomes, the greater the risk for security breech. According to the Health and Human Services website, as of September 30, 2019 the OCR has settled or imposed a civil money […]

Ascension is sharing private healthcare information with Google.  The project, dubbed “Project Nightingale,” was put into play to help Ascension centralize its patient database for the over 2600 hospitals in its healthcare system.  Patient information, including names, test results, and dates of birth are also being collected by Google to help develop a new software […]

Global social media ad spending is projected to grow by as much as 20% this year, bringing it up to the number three slot of largest advertising channels according to Zenith’s Advertizing Expenditure Forecast. Zenith is a media ad agency parented by Publicis Media. $84 billion is slated for global social media spending, exceeding print […]

Researchers at Kaspersky have uncovered a new highly sophisticated, high impact malware threat that breaks encryption:  Reductor.  According to the researchers, the malware “compromises encrypted web communications in an impressive way” and gives the threat actors behind it “capabilities that few other actors in the world have.” Reductor compromises the encrypted HTTPS communication, which enables […]