Data Breach Leaves PSNI Officers ‘Incredibly Vulnerable’

The Irish News has reported that a major data breach has exposed every serving officer’s personal data online. Almost 10,000 officers and staff members have been affected.

For almost three hours, several types of personal metadata were available for the general public to see. Authorities believe undercover officers could have been exposed, and may be unable to continue their work. In general, a rise in the risk of terrorist attacks against serving officers is feared to have increased.

The data breach happened after a freedom of information request led to an unfortunate, self-inflicted error. No foul play has been suspected, but the damage is major and widespread.

In all workplaces, the importance of data protection cannot be overstated. We all handle vast amounts of sensitive information on a daily basis. Steps can be taken to safeguard and protect information, but human error remains a significant vulnerability that can lead to data breaches.

Thousands of Organisations Compromised by ‘Hafnium’ Email Hack

As the saying goes, there’s no rest for the wicked. Just a few months after behemoth IT management solutions provider SolarWinds was the victim of a major cyber attack, IT professionals across the globe are scrambling to patch their Exchange servers against a new zero-day exploit.

Earlier this month, it was announced that hundreds of thousands of organisations (at least 30,000 in the US alone) had potentially been compromised by a group called Hafnium, who are based out of China and believed to be state-sponsored.

Many SolarWinds Customers Still Exposed Online, Despite Well-Publicised Breach

IT management software giant Solarwinds were the victims of what is believed to be one of the largest cyber attacks yet late last year, sending shivers down the spine of much of the tech world. The attack breached SolarWinds monitoring tool Orion, which allowed the hackers to deliver malicious updates to unsuspecting users of the tool for several months.

Now, two months after the breach was discovered, an alarming number of SolarWinds customers still have vulnerable Orion servers exposed to the internet.

BA Ends up With £20 Million Fine for 2018 Data Breach

British Airways now hold the dubious honour of receiving the highest data protection fine that the UK has ever seen, after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) handed down a record-breaking £20 million fine. The fine could have been much heftier, however, as the ICO fine was originally slated at well over £150 million. BA negotiated to have to fine reduced on the back of several factors, including how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected their industry and business and the conduction of a more thorough review on how the 2018 incident occurred from a technical standpoint.

Users Warned of Major New Phishing Campaign, Using Infected Excel Files

Microsoft has released a statement warning users to stay vigilant of phishing emails, as a malicious campaign has been detected which tricks users into downloading an Excel sheet containing harmful software. The criminals responsible are taking advantage of the confusion around Covid-19, as many others have been doing lately, to convince users that the emails are genuine and to enable macros within Excel once the file has been downloaded to their computer.