This week in cyber attacks.

COVID 19 and AI – how can we use the latter to protect us against cyber crime in the time of the former.

Cynet say that their reporting process focused on several organizations in Italy and 
indicates a distinct increase in phishing attacks by remote workers. 
“This suggests that remote workers have become a weak point that malicious hackers are targeting and that user 
credentials in off-site (home) environments are increasingly at risk, especially in regions with escalating cases of COVID-19,” Cynet said.
Checkpoint finds more than 200,000 coronavirus-related cyber attacks every week. The study, “Cyber Attack Trends: 2020 Mid-Year Report” discussed how criminal, political 
and non-state threat actors have exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to threaten organizations across all sectors, including government , industry, critical infrastructure, and healthcare.
Nebraska Medicine offers an update on 
‘cyber attack’ that causes network issues-KETV Omaha 

 

Nebraska Medicine HACK

Nebraska Medicine issued the following statement Thursday: Earlier this week, Nebraska Medicine encountered a major downtime incident in the information technology system. 

Attacks on health care organizations are increasingly growing, and we are continually updating our security strategies to help avoid cyber security incidents. 
Terry Reinert, Chief Executive Officer of Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence, Red Berry Technologies, said there are things companies and individuals can do to defend themselves from these attacks.

This include teaching personnel to look out for unusual connections and regularly upgrading phone and computer apps. It also advises an in-depth or layered defense of protection.

“Because you make sure that even though an attacker were able to crack your network, what they can do is very, very small, and then they’d have to make a lot of effort to pass across your network to reach other info,” Terry Reinert said.

Red Berry Developments COO Courtney Reinert said that these cyber threats also have a huge financial impact.

“The cost of a disruption like this is crippling for the company,” she added, “a lot of procedures are shifting, you’ve now lost the cost of people being able to come in. Things are becoming cancelled.”

Gary Sparks is the Program Director for the Cyber Security Center at Metro Community College and has 16 years of combat security experience.

“It takes time to dig through the details and get an idea of exactly what happened and where it came from,” Sparks said.

Sparks said he was getting Homeland Security warnings on potential external threats.

“If they think it’s a state actor, they’re going to put out a warning to let people know that they’re beginning to see crime, and other stuff like that. I haven’t seen something like that come across,” he said.

Technology specialists and patients alike are optimistic that these problems will eventually be addressed.

“We’re talking about Nebraska Medicine. It’s incredibly powerful for the environment, the city and all those people,” Terry Reinert said.