The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a Private Industry Notification on September 27, 2023, highlighting two concerning ransomware trends and providing companies with guidance on mitigating potential threat actor activity. As of July 2023, the FBI observed multiple ransomware attacks where two attacks against the same victim involving different ransomware variants are deployed often […]
National Security & Digital Crimes
CISA Releases Advisory Concerning Chinese-Backed Threat Actor
On September 27, 2023, The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Japanese National Police Agency (NPA), and the Japanese National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) released a joint cybersecurity advisory (CSA) concerning the recent activity of […]
New York Continues to Focus on Companies’ Data Security Practices
New York Attorney General Letitia James recently announced two agreements related to data breaches with entities that operate in the education industry. In both instances the entities paid the ransom and received evidence of deletion of the stolen data. Most recently, on October 5, 2023 the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) announced a $49.5 […]
Penn State University Hit With False Claims Act Suit for Alleged Cyber Security Deficiencies
On September 1, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania unsealed a qui tam False Claims Act (“FCA”) lawsuit (originally filed on October 5, 2022) alleging Penn State University failed to provide “adequate security” for Covered Defense Information, as contractually required by Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (“DFARS”) 252.204-7012. DFARS requires […]
Chinese Hackers Exploit Gap in Cloud Environment Used by U.S. Government
According to recent reports issued by Microsoft and U.S. government agencies, hackers recently exploited a gap in Microsoft’s cloud environment, enabling the malicious actors to access the email accounts of employees at the United States Commerce and State Departments. Including the U.S. government, around 10 organizations were victimized in the U.S. and about 25 were […]