At a glance.
- Ransomware in the second quarter.
- Significant third-party breaches in 2021.
- UK charity disbursement fund breached.
Digital Shadows’ Q2 ransomware report.
The analysts at risk software provider Digital Shadows have released their Q2 2021 ransomware report, and it shows that attackers posted data stolen from 740 organizations on leak sites, up 47% over Q1. As ZDNet explains, the report underscores the fact that double-extortion tactics, first popularized by ransomware group Maze, remain a growing trend. The most targeted sectors were industrial goods and services, construction and materials, retail, technology, and healthcare, and the retail sector saw the largest surge, a whopping 183% increase from Q1 to Q2. As for the most active ransomware group, Conti (responsible for the unprecedented recent attack on Ireland’s healthcare services) takes that prize for the second consecutive quarter, followed by Avaddon, PYSA, and REvil. Looking ahead, Digital Shadows states, “Ransomware operations will likely continue to operate brazenly into the third quarter of 2021, giving limited thought to who they are targeting and more to how much money they might make.”
2021’s significant third-party breaches...so far.
Panorays takes a walk down memory lane, offering an overview of five of the most noteworthy US data leaks caused by third-party breaches in 2021. Accellion’s file transfer application breach is a standout for the sheer number of victims it impacted (a figure that’s still growing), and the resultant lawsuits waged by victims in California and Washington state courts. Impacting 3.3 million customers, the Volkswagen Group of America data leak demonstrates the dangers of misconfigured cloud storage databases. The April breach of Click Studios’ password manager Passwordstate highlights how even tools designed to improve security need to be closely monitored. The attack on Cancer Centers of Southwest Oklahoma’s cloud-based storage provider Elekta exposed the highly sensitive medical data of eight thousand oncology patients. And last but certainly not least, REvil ransomware group’s recent attack on Kaseya’s remote monitoring and management software platform, which impacted fifteen hundred businesses across the globe, is considered by many to be the largest ransomware attack of all time. All of these incidents underline just how critical it is for businesses to thoroughly assess the security posture of their third-party service providers.
No good deed...
Third Sector reports that the National Lottery Community Fund (NCLF), a UK organization that distributes grants from the National Lottery for community improvement, experienced a data breach compromising the contact info and bank data of grant applicants and recipients collected over the past six years. NCLF has not disclosed the cause of the breach or the number of individuals exposed, but they did confirm that the victims hail from Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Though bank account numbers were exposed, PINs and card details fortunately were not among the data collected.