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Threat actors commonly leverage catastrophic events to launch attacks. As such, it comes as no surprise that COVID-19 is being used to forward cybercrime. What’s more, is that COVID-19 being a global phenomenon has provided a vehicle for scammers to shine. As a result, this prompted the United States Secret Service to release a statement warning individuals against the scams (see below for official PDF link).

To help protect you, we have collected a list of top scams to watch out for:

How my daughter got catfished and almost took down the entire family finances.

A tale of near misses by Lauro Chavez.

Ransomware is perhaps one of the most tossed around buzzwords today. In reality, ransomware is simply the word used to describe malicious software that scrambles the data of a system and renders it completely inaccessible until the ransom is paid. In recent years, the ransomware variant titled ‘RobbinHood’ has seen a major uptick in infecting public municipalities.

Despite Microsoft releasing a patch for the 2019 BlueKeep Vulnerability, CyberMDX dicovered, 22% of hospital Windows devices are still exposed to BlueKeep. This puts medical devices at a much higher risk for BlueKeep and ultimately ransomware.

The expansion of mobile technology in recent years has come with several amenities. It has also generated popular slogans like “there is an app for that.” These two notions have produced the idea of using mobile applications to complete practical activities such as voting.

Anything that can get hacked, will get hacked. This is why voting security experts have warned that paper ballots are the only secure method to vote.

The want and need to keep a company's data private is universal, but cyber criminals are constantly trying to gain access to that data. To better protect our nation from malicious hackers, government representatives have proposed offensive measures that companies can take in the case that a hacker steals private information.

With major support having ended for Windows 7, companies and end/home users who continue to rely on Windows 7 may be at risk. Microsoft announced that as of January 14th of 2020, they will no longer be pushing security updates for Windows 7, which are meant to cover new and existing vulnerabilities. With these updates no longer being pushed out for that operating system, there is an increased risk that some new vulnerabilities will be found and exploited. These vulnerabilities may cause loss of data or even allow for the creation of back doors for hackers to leave malicious malware on existing systems.

The below commentary is an excerpt from a longer white paper being produced by the Silent Sector team on how to hire and retain quality security, and by extension, IT resources.  This excerpt addresses retaining the professionals you’ve hired.