The Top 5 Cyber Hacks of 2015

The Top 5 Cyber Hacks of 2015

2015 was a busy year for cyber criminals. As the year comes to a close, we are reviewing the top 5 cyber attacks. Unfortunately, by the looks of it, this seems to be just the beginning.

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1. Office of Personal Management (OPM)
The United States Office of Personal Management announced that they were victims of a data breach in June, 2015. The breach began in March, 2014 and remained undetected until April, 2015. This is one of the largest data breaches to occur in the federal sector, affecting approximately 18 million government employees. Information such as Social Security numbers, names, birth dates, addresses, military records, pension information, and more was leaked. 5.6 million sets of fingerprints were also stolen, putting secret federal agents in harms way. The Wall Street Journal reported that US government officials suspected Chinese hackers were responsible for the data breach. Since this hack, China and the US have had numerous discussions on this issue and are currently their discussing cybersecurity issues.

2. Vtech
Hong Kong toy manufacturer VTech was hit with a very serious data breach in November 2015. VTech is known as a children’s toys manufacturer. Their items include tablets, phones, and baby monitors. This hack was reported by the hacker himself. who gave his findings to Motherboard. Approximately 10 million VTech customers were affected by the data breach. According to VTech’s website, a total of 4,854,209 customer (parent) accounts and 6,368,509 children’s profiles were affected. Customers around the world were affected but the USA saw the highest number of parent accounts, approximately 2 million. The hacker was able to collect photos of children and their parents, including audio recordings, by breaking into VTech’s servers through a SQL injection. VTech immediately began a thorough investigation for this cyber crime. As of December 16th, the authorities in the UK arrested a 21 year old man in connection with the VTech data breach. The investigation is still ongoing.

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3. Ashley Madison
Perhaps the juiciest data breach of 2015, the Ashley Madison website was hacked by a group named the Impact Team. More than 32 million users had their personal e-mail addresses leaked. Ashley Madison, a website that encourages extramarital affairs, found itself in the middle of a huge headache. According to the hackers, the reasoning behind the breach was simple: to prove that Ashley Madison was corrupt and lied to their users for money. Ashley Madison charged their customers a $20 fee for those who wanted to have their profile deleted fully. The hackers were able to prove that the $20 fee did nothing to protect customers and was just a scam for more revenue. This specific hack raises many ethical questions on user data and how companies are handling the user data. Currently, as of December 2015, Ashley Madison hack victims are starting to receive blackmail letters and people are still being affected.

4. T Mobile
This past October, T-Mobile announced that they fell victim to hackers by way of Experian, a credit reporting service. 15 million applicants applied for credit at TMobile and ended up having critical data such as social security numbers, license information, passport info, and more stolen. While no banking or credit card information was leaked, the information that was released can easily allow for identity theft. Although TMobile is offering two years of free credit monitoring to those affected, any cyber criminal could simply wait for the those two years to pass before attempting to do anything.

5. Hacking Team
In July 2015, the Hacking Team, a company who sells surveillance software to law enforcement agencies, had over 400 gigabytes of crucial information stolen. Surveillance data, contracts, emails, and invoices were leaked. Revealed in the leaked data showed the Hacking Team used poor passwords which only assisted the hackers to gain access into the Hacking Team’s servers. Much worse however, was the data that showed the Hacking Team was not afraid to sell their surveillance software to any government worldwide, creating lasting effects by giving cyber criminals better tools to commit their crimes.

How can Axiom Cyber Solutions help your business?
Axiom Cyber Solutions is offering Managed Cyber-Security Protection for Small Business starting as low as $199 per month. We realize that most small businesses do not have a dedicated IT team and business owners may be handling their cyber security matters on their own.

Let us take over and provide you with peace of mind. Axiom will provide your business a firewall and manage it so you don’t have to worry about securing your business. We will assess the security risks for your business and will help implement the right cyber security service for your business.

Axiom’s solutions come in different sizes and all our solutions are designed to deal with the attack vectors of today while being adaptive and flexible enough to continue to secure your network for years to come. For more information, check out our website at axiomcyber.com or give us a call us at (800) 519-5070. #FightBackWithAxiom

Think You’re Immune to Cyber Crime Because You’re Small? Think Again!

Think You’re Immune to Cyber Crime Because You’re Small? Think Again!

Do you believe your healthcare practice isn’t appealing to a cyber criminal because of your small size, lack of revenue, or maybe because you’re just a drop in the vast bucket of healthcare practices?

You are dead wrong. You are actually more appealing to cyber criminals because they know as a smaller practice, you are probably less secure.

A poll by KPMG showed that over 200 healthcare providers were polled and found that four out of five providers had been hacked. 44% of healthcare organizations have been attacked 1-50 times while 38% have been attacked between 50-350 times in the last year. 13% were attacked more than 350 times.

These cyber criminals are going after smaller healthcare practices with full force and the consequences are dire. If a cyber criminal is successful in attacking your network, you will have violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), lose all trust from your patients, or even worse, you could lose a life and your entire practice. You are not immune to these consequences if your healthcare practice is small.

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Out of all the industries that exist, the healthcare industry is probably one of the most complicated to get a handle on their cyber-security. Many healthcare practices have been holding onto old practices, and with the ever-evolving landscape in cyber-security, if you’re not staying up-to-date, you are opening yourself to these attacks. For many, the idea of tackling this is too much. Instead of being so overwhelmed by all the ways a hacker could breach your network, take that time to reach out to the professionals who will help manage your cyber-security.

According to the American Medical News, a five physician practice named Phoenix Cardiac Surgery was fined and penalized after it was found that they had a host of problems amongst their cyber security and were negligent in fixing these problems.

The practice ‘failed to implement adequate policies and procedures to protect patient information; failed to document that it trained employees on HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules; failed to identify a security official within the practice and conduct a risk analysis; and failed to obtain any business associate agreements for its Internet-based email and scheduling services.’

In the end, Phoenix Cardiac Surgery had to pay over $100,000. Leon Rodriguez, director of the Health and Human Services of The Office for Civil Rights stated,

We hope that health care providers pay careful attention to this resolution agreement and understand that the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules have been in place for many years, and OCR expects full compliance no matter the size of a covered entity.

Once a healthcare facility has violated HIPPA privacy laws, HIPPA will continue to audit the practice. That means that they have eagle eyes and are looking for other violations. It does not help anyone to ignore your cyber-security issues.

How can Axiom Cyber Solutions help your healthcare practice?
Axiom Cyber Solutions is offering Managed Cyber-Security Protection for Small Business starting as low as $199 per month. We realize that most small businesses do not have a dedicated IT team and business owners may be handling their cyber security matters on their own.

Let us take over and provide you with peace of mind. Axiom will provide your business a firewall and manage it so you don’t have to worry about securing your business. We will assess the security risks for your business and will help implement the right cyber security service for your business.

Axiom’s solutions come in different sizes and all our solutions are designed to deal with the attack vectors of today while being adaptive and flexible enough to continue to secure your network for years to come. For more information, check out our website at axiomcyber.com or give us a call us at (800) 519-5070. #FightBackWithAxiom

The Benefits of Managed Cyber-Security

The Benefits of Managed Cyber-Security

You’d have to have had your head stuck in the sand for the past year to not notice the amount of cyber-security breaches that are occurring. The cyber-security industry is growing and attacks are at an all-time high.

Quick Statistics:
-Currently, 60% of all targeted attacks struck small and medium sized organizations (Symantec).
-For most of these businesses, it took 170 days to detect a malicious or criminal attack (Ponemon).
-60% of businesses close within six months of experiencing a cyber breach (National Cyber Security Alliance).
So why do so many businesses continue to ignore their cyber-security?

For most, it comes down to their budget. Many employees in small businesses wear several ‘hats’ and are involved with numerous departments at their job. If most small businesses can’t hire an IT staff, it’s safe to say that a cyber-security professional is definitely out of the question. For many of these businesses, they haven’t even thought about an incident response plan for these attacks. These businesses don’t know what they’ll do, who they’ll contact, or how they’ll tell their customers when it happens to them.
Axiom Cyber Solutions wants to help keep you and your business secure. For $199 a month, Axiom will manage your business’ cyber-security. We believe the benefits to managed cyber-security is well worth it, in order to keep your business and clients safe and secure.

Here are 4 major benefits to managed cyber-security.

1. Protecting your business means protecting your data: All businesses should have anti-virus software but in the world of ever evolving cyber threats, it simply is not enough to only have anti-virus software. Each Axiom managed cyber-security package comes with: An Axiom Sentry Firewall managed by Cyber-Security Experts, Automatic Firmware & Security Updates, Threat Detection, Threat Prevention, Real-time Alerting & Monitoring, Denial of Service Protection, Advanced Ransomware Protection, Monthly Reporting and 24/7 Support

2. By spending $199 a month, you have the peace of mind that your network is being monitored with state of the art equipment. With our real time alerting, you will not have to wait 170 days to discover your network has been maliciously attacked. Leave it to our experts to help keep you secure.

3. If your business is protected, your organization’s reputation will not be hurt. One negative story about your business in the news will scare potential clients and your current clients. No one wants to do business with a company who doesn’t care about their clients and by having managed cyber-security, you are protecting your client’s most valuable data.

4. Do you want to have to report to the FTC daily? Save yourself from being hit with fines and audits, otherwise the FTC can fine a company that has not sufficiently protected their data against a breach. The FTC will require a company to undergo 20 years of security audits if they are found negligent. Having firewalls and intrusion detection mechanisms in place to prohibit cyber criminals from gaining access to your network is key to avoiding the potential fallout you’ll have to deal with.

How can we help your small business?
Axiom Cyber Solutions is offering Cyber-Security Protection for Small Business starting as low as $199 per month. We realize that most small businesses do not have a dedicated IT team and business owners may be handling their cyber security matters on their own. Let us take over and provide you with peace of mind. Axiom will provide your business a firewall and manage it so you don’t have to worry about securing your business. We will assess the security risks for your business and will help implement the right cyber security service for your business.
Axiom’s solutions come in different sizes and all our solutions are designed to deal with the attack vectors of today while being adaptive and flexible enough to continue to secure your network for years to come. For more information, check out our website at axiomcyber.com or give us a call us at (800) 519-5070. #FightBackWithAxiom