Cyber-demic Update

February 2021

A monthly digest on the impact of COVID-19 in the cybersecurity space in particular to the vaccine rollout, remote working and rise of new threat vectors. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unknown which way the wind will blow

As we have counseled our clients for more than a decade, it’s a game of cat and mouse and you need to try to stay a step ahead of cybercriminals…As said by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (cisa) in its assessment of the SolarWinds breach: “This threat actor has demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft in these intrusions”…After a few months, there are still many things to learn about the SolarWinds attack, but a great overview of what is known is here…According to our 2020 data breach preparedness study, only 19 percent of companies have a mature data breach preparedness plan that means privacy and data protection program activities are fully deployed and maintained across the enterprise…Yikes.

Tax season will be quite…taxing

Every season we have our usual suspects trying to cash in during tax season but this year we are seeing extraordinary activity, especially around unemployment fraud due to the pandemic…It was reported that scammers have taken $36 billion in fraudulent unemployment payments…Identity theft is among the most common scams so watch out if you receive a 1099-G federal tax forms for benefits that you didn’t receive…Best step to take is file as soon as possible…For more protection tips from Experian, visit our blog and if you are curious how hackers get your personal info to file taxes read my colleague Brian Stack’s posts about the dark web.