Financial institutions are amongst the most highly targeted organizations for cyber security attacks. To address this, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has outlined a list of controls, known as the RBI Guidelines for Cyber Security Framework, for banks to achieve a minimum recommended baseline of cyber attack resilience. Each area carries several detailed specifications from the list of controls outlined by the Reserve Bank of India.
Dark web monitoring is the process of tracking your organization’s information on the dark web. Dark web monitoring solutions can scan through billions of pages on the internet to find leaked or stolen information, such as compromised passwords, credentials, intellectual property, and other sensitive data being shared and sold among cybercriminals operating on the dark web.
In this post, the three major cyber threats facing businesses impacted by the Optus breach are discussed. Security responses for each threat are also mentioned to help you reduce the potential of these risks developing into breaches.
The Medibank hack began with the theft of credentials belonging to an individual with privileged access to Medibank’s internal systems. These credentials were sold and purchased on the dark web by an unconfirmed buyer who used them to gain access to Medibank’s internal system.
An identity breach is an identity-based impersonation attack in which a hacker exploits vulnerabilities to obtain PII (personally identifiable information), contact information, credit card numbers, and important credentials like passwords and usernames to commit identity theft, identity fraud, or other cybercrimes without the victim’s knowledge. Using stolen information from a data breach, cybercriminals may attempt to steal classified information or money from the victim.
Cyber insurance (also cyber liability insurance coverage or cyber risk insurance) is a type of insurance policy that helps organizations cover financial damages related to cyber attacks or data breaches. Cyber insurance is especially important as the cost of a data breach continues to rise, and the amount of cyber attacks is higher than ever.
The OpenSSL project has announced two security vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786. The good news is that these vulnerabilities are unlikely to facilitate remote code execution as originally anticipated, and only OpenSSL version 3.0.0 and later are impacted. The bad news, however, is that even though the remote control is unlikely, it’s still possible.
Of the many lessons that can be learned from how the Optus data breach was handled, one stands out - Australia’s privacy laws are not equipped to support Aussie data breach victims. To change this, the Australian Government is amending its Telecommunications Regulations 2021 Act. APRA-regulated financial entities can now be involved in efforts to mitigate financial fraud following a data breach.
The Optus data breach was the second-largest data breach in Australia. 9.8 million current and former Optus customers were impacted by the event, with 2.1 million suffering compromises of highly-sensitive government identification information, like driver’s license numbers and passport numbers. In other words, this single cybersecurity incident has placed almost half of the Australian population at risk of identity theft scams and financial fraud.
The Optus data breach occurred through an unprotected and publically exposed API. This API didn’t require user authentication before facilitating a connection. A lack of an authentication policy meant anyone that discovered the API on the internet could connect to it without submitting a username or password.
