The recent slate of breaches and regulatory actions has prompted many companies who had been doing the minimum in terms of proactive cyber risk management to rethink their approach. In the U.S., new regulations are emerging (for states like Virginia, Colorado, Massachusetts and many others), and existing regulators are increasing their enforcement, as we’ve seen by the NY Dept of Financial Services (NYDFS) and the SEC.

Phishing schemes are always evolving. This past year, email thread hijacking took phishing to new depths of subterfuge as criminals hid in plain sight within existing conversations. But no matter how well cybercriminals have refined their messaging or counterfeited legitimate logos and branding, the one constant has always been their delivery method: email. Until now. Online chat services have become a new target for cybercriminals to introduce documents loaded with malware into organizations.

Industries most impacted in 2019 continued to be hard hit in both 2020 and so far in 2021, including healthcare, education and financial services. However, the greatest percentage increases occurred in industries that had been generally spared in 2019. The overall implication is that data attacks became broader and deeper during the pandemic, a trend that continues during the recovery.

Businesses in Singapore face mounting challenges to protect customer data as a result of the newly enacted Personal Data Protection (Amendment) Bill (PDPA). With higher penalties expected to be levied from February 2022, it’s imperative that enterprises, particularly those collecting customer data, have a solid information security framework and incident response plan in place.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally shifted the cyber threat landscape for Australia’s health sector, with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) reporting a 84% increase in the number of cyber security incident reports relating to the health sector between 2019 and 2020.1 As custodians of vast volumes of highly sensitive information, the industry continues to find itself at the mercy of cyberattacks that paralyze systems until a ransom is paid—threatening the security of patient d