A week of reports and some funding announcements was overshadowed by Salesforce and Workday holding their yearly conferences in the same week.
Operant AI secured a $10 million Series A funding to expand its team and for product development. No announcement about opening overseas sales offices or moving into new territories.
Panzura has launched Symphony to help organisations deal with the complexities of unstructured data. It supports on-premises, hybrid, private and public cloud object data stores. Importantly, it is already certified for AWS, Azure, GCP and Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage.
The US has disrupted a botnet that had over 200,000 consumer devices under control. The Chinese company Integrity Technology Group (ITG) owned and controlled the botnet. The company is better known as a front for the hacking group Flax Typhoon.
Europol
Last week saw the 13th Europol Data Protection Experts Network (EDEN) conference. On the agenda were the implications of data protection and cybersecurity for law enforcement and beyond. The two are increasingly starting to butt up against each other as individuals want greater protection for their data. Meanwhile, law enforcement wants unfettered access.
The theme of this year’s EDEN event was, ‘Data Protection & Cyber Security as Law Enforcement Core Business.’ The focus was on how law enforcement can leverage advancing technologies while maintaining ethical standards and meeting legal requirements.
Europol also supported European and Latin American authorities in dismantling an international criminal network. The network was focused on unlocking stolen or lost mobile phones through a phishing platform.
Over 483,000 victims worldwide who had attempted to regain access to their phones had been phished in the process. The victims are mainly Spanish-speaking nationals from European, North American and South American countries.
The operation took place between 10 and 17 September and resulted in 17 arrests, 28 searches and 921 items seized. The majority were mobile phones but it also included other electronic devices, vehicles and weapons.
FBI
The FBI continues to push its Take A Beat campaign to increase awareness of frauds and scams. It comes after the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) published its latest report. It shows that Jan to May 2024 has already seen over $1.6 billion in losses, $300 million more than the same period last year.
Forescout
Forescout has announced its new SaaS Operational Technologies (OT) solution. Forescout for OT Security allows organizations to secure complex, heterogeneous OT, IoT/IoMT, and IT environments in any environment.
Forescout for OT Security combines:
- Proactive security and exposure management
- Threat detection powered by Forescout Research – Vedere Labs’ proprietary threat research of unmanaged devices
- Critical operational monitoring
- Control across cloud and on-premises networks
Barry Mainz, Forescout CEO, said, “The attack surface from connected assets, including unmanaged OT and IoT devices, is outpacing security teams’ ability to protect critical digital assets.
“Organizations are spending millions on the latest visibility and detection technology and are still experiencing downtime or getting compromised by ransomware, exploits, known vulnerabilities, and zero days. They don’t need more visibility; they need actionable intelligence and control.”
National Cyber Security Centre
It’s time for teams to sign up for the CyberFirst Girls Competition 2024/25. The registration for the 2024 / 25 CyberFirst Girls Competition, run by GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, is open, and teachers are encouraged to sign up teams now.
The competition, in its ninth year, aims to introduce girls aged 12 and 13 from across the UK to cyber security, with the ultimate goal of increasing diversity in the industry’s UK workforce, where women currently make up just 17%.
US Department of Justice
Song Wu, a Chinese national, has been charged with a multi-year “Spear-Phishing” campaign. The indictment details charges for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. These are related to efforts to fraudulently obtain computer software and source code created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”), research universities, and private companies.
Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta, said, “Once again, the FBI and our partners have demonstrated that cyber criminals around the world who are seeking to steal our companies’ most sensitive and valuable information can and will be exposed and held accountable.
“As this indictment shows, the FBI is committed to pursuing the arrest and prosecution of anyone who engages in illegal and deceptive practices to steal protected information.”
