Weekly Cybersecurity Recap January 20

Caesars Entertainment is one of the largest casino companies in the United States and is well-known for its loyalty program. The company serves countless customers in Las Vegas and elsewhere throughout the world.

Sabre is a huge technology company that serves as a powerful travel reservation system for many of the major hotels and airlines in the United States.

This week, data breaches were particularly bad, with attacks impacting travel technology giant Sabre, production giant Johnson and Johnson, and medical company Amerita.

Amerita and Pharmerica are medical companies that offer services to nursing facilities, hospitals, individuals, and seniors. These companies specialize in infusion treatments but also provide additional medical services.

Traderie is a special trading platform dedicated to enabling Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Roblox, Elden Ring, Diablo, and Rocket League players to buy and sell in-game items with one another.

Johnson and Johnson is a large-scale manufacturing company that provides pharmaceuticals and medical products to companies throughout the world.

In this digital age, staying connected is not just a luxury but an absolute necessity. And at the heart of every wireless connection lies something called an SSID. 

Freecycle is an online platform dedicated to helping its users exchange free goods with one another. Freecycle is designed to help reduce waste by helping people give away their unwanted items instead of throwing them away.

UnitedHealthcare is a large insurance company that serves more than 8 million Americans throughout the United States. The company gathers health, personal, and financial information and utilizes all those different data points to provide reliable insurance services.

Each week, new data breaches plague the public. This week, significant healthcare and retail breaches led to substantial data losses for customers and patients throughout the United States.

Cognizant is a massive IT services company with over 300,000 employees and more than $15 Billion in annual revenue. The company helps major corporations with IT services.

The Indiana Medicaid program helps state residents who fall into a lower income bracket. These individuals use the program to obtain medical care.

Topgolf Callaway is a powerful golf company that offers modern golfing entertainment, as well as selling golf equipment in most areas of the world.

Forever 21 is a large fashion company that spans across many different countries. Forever 21 has over 540 retail outlets worldwide and approximately 43,000 employees.

Far too many businesses today experience issues with fraud or costly mistakes. Learning to prevent these issues makes your business look more professional and stops preventable financial losses from occurring.

Unlocking the potential of data is essential for businesses in today's digital age. However, as companies collect and store vast amounts of valuable information, a critical question arises: Who has control over this data?

Data breaches are becoming more and more of a problem worldwide, and this week, it's especially obvious that they're causing trouble for serious companies.

Mom's Meals is a food service company that helps provide meals to people who are in need of help. This meal service organization works to deliver food to the homes of individuals who need help with food.

Prospect Medical Holdings is an umbrella company with over 16 separate hospitals throughout Pennsylvania, California, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Blue Bross and Blue Shield of Illinois is the largest insurance company in Illinois, serving over 8. 9 million individuals. The company handles a huge amount of medical information and is responsible for ensuring that millions of people have the medical and dental insurance they need.

The University of Minnesota is a large research school based in Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The school works with more than 50,000 students annually and protects data from them over time.

Criminals are constantly improving their security probing and penetration tactics. Their efforts make traditional cybersecurity measures more obsolete with every passing day.

A data catalog is a powerful research tool that brings together all the informational resources and stored data that a company has into one easy database that can be searched.

TMX Finance and related companies are all involved in crisis loans and emergency lending programs. The companies handle financial data for a huge number of individuals throughout the United States, and the different individuals involved with the company could be at risk for this reason.

Data breaches are quickly becoming one of the most damaging crimes committed today and one of the most common. Hackers are stealing valuable information from organizations at a rapidly growing rate, which means your data isn't safe for anyone.

DuoLingo is a massive language learning service that provides lessons to more than 74 million users around the world. The service offers short language lessons via a set of apps and is designed to help users learn new languages.

M&T Bank was established in 1856 and is one of the largest banks in the US. It is based in Buffalo, New York, and currently has over 1,000 branches in 12 separate states.

The state of Missouri's low-income Medicaid program through the Department of Social Services is responsible for offering medical insurance to Missourans in need.

UMass Chan Medical School is a public medical school located in Worcester, Massachusetts. The school was founded in 1962 and is part of the University of Massachusetts college system.

Tesla, an Austin-Texas-based automaker specializing in electric vehicles, employs more than 127,000 workers worldwide today. The automaker has an annual revenue of 53.

Microsoft engineers coined the phrase Cross-Site Scripting in early 2000, and the attacks have grown to nearly 30% of all web application assaults.

We hate cables. Because of this, Bluetooth has rapidly become an integral part of daily life. Wireless headphones and smartwatches are prominent examples, but today, even our washing machines and light bulbs can connect to our phones.

Financial institutions and state government agencies were the main targets of hackers this week. Major organizations like Bank of America and Hospitality Staffing Solutions were hit hard resulting in huge data losses for citizens, and the states of Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Tennessee each experienced major data losses in their regulatory bodies or programs.

The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System is a retirement and benefits program administered to many full-time employees throughout the state.

Ernst and Young is one of the leading consulting companies that helps with strategic and transactional taxes. The company offers excellent services to other major companies and handles a large amount of financial and personal data for all the customers impacted by them.

The Pennsylvania Child Care Works program helps low-income families pay for their childcare costs. The program offers a portion of the childcare payment amount, and the families pay the rest.

The Vitality Group, LLC, a business-to-business vendor that provides employee benefit services to GuidePoint Security, experienced a security vulnerability on May 30, 2023 relating to the third-party file transfer program called MOVEit.

Hospitality Staffing Solutions is a short-term employment provider or temp agency that sends workers to a variety of hospitality-related organizations.

Manipulating massive amounts of raw data takes on greater significance as targeted technology develops new enrichment capabilities.

The rapid growth of big data has given rise to a new set of challenges when moving massive amounts of data from one computer system to another.

The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation is an organization that oversees the financial sector within the state. The department is split into four divisions: Securities, Banking, Captive Insurance, and Insurance.

Prudential Insurance Company of America is one of the largest financial services and insurance companies in the United States today.

New companies are hurt by significant data breaches every week, especially in the United States. This week insurance companies were the big target.

Progressive is a large insurance company based in Mayfield Village, Ohio. The company is known throughout the United States and other parts of the world and is responsible for insuring many US citizens.

The Colorado Department of Higher Education is the government organization responsible for overseeing public education throughout the state.

Allegheny County is the second largest county in Pennsylvania, behind Philadelphia County. It is located in Southwest Pennsylvania and has approximately 1.

The cryptocurrency phenomenon began in 2008 with the introduction of Bitcoin. Along with the young digital currency, other digital technologies were brought to the media forefront.

Decision-makers have always relied on information to make the best choice. However, never in history have they had so much data to draw from.

PH Tech is a specialized services company that works with health insurance companies providing some of their business and administrative services.

Fairfax Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, or Fairfax OMS, is a dental practice that first opened in Burke, Virginia, in 1980. The organization offers a mix of dental surgery services, such as bone grafting, wisdom tooth extraction, dental implants, and more.

Each week we look at the data losses, hacker attacks, and the state of security in the United States and around the world. This week things seem to be particularly bleak.

Michigan State University is a large school located in East Lansing, Michigan. This public university has more than 49,000 students per semester and is set over a location spread across 5,300 acres.

PokerStars is one of the largest online poker rooms in the world and has millions of registered customers that use the platform to play remotely with others from different areas of the world.

The impacts of account takeover fraud are genuine. According to the Javelin 2022 Identity Fraud Study, 22% of U.S. adults have been victims of account takeover attacks.

Major businesses from around the world are losing valuable login credentials at a rapid rate. Huge corporations are going through applications with platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, DocuSign, and so many others, and during the process, they are losing valuable login credentials.

We can all remember the old war stories of secret agents and the unbreakable messages back to headquarters. One of the most popular means of evil messaging secrecy was recording the text backward on a rock and roll record.

For most businesses, data is their most valuable asset. When that data is managed correctly, it keeps an organization running smoothly with the correct information always close at hand.

Maximus Federal Services is a significant government contractor that helps administrate many different US government programs.

Near the end of July, the MOVEit data breaches that occurred back in May are still doing serious damage and hurting major companies.

1st Source Bank is a major financial institution located in Indiana and Michigan. The bank is headquartered in South Bend, Indiana, but there are 81 branches in the two states.

Microsoft is a large tech company based in the United States with operations in many other parts of the world. The organization is best known for its computer operating systems and its Microsoft 365 suite of business applications.

The National Student Clearinghouse is a verification tool used by educational establishments around the country to verify students are who they say they are.

Tampa General Hospital is a mid-sized medical facility that caters to locals in the Tampa area. The hospital has 1,040 beds available and serves as a research and academic center, along with offering tertiary care to its patients.

A lot of scams float around the internet that some people jump at or take a little coaxing to overcome the rejections. A few scams have ready-made targets more than willing to take advantage of the possibilities the scam offers.

Server protocols are a set of established rules that specify how to format packets of data to send and receive from endpoint to endpoint.

Milliman Solutions is a risk-assessment company that works with life insurance providers to explain to them the total risks involved with investing in any one individual.

It's been a few months since the MOVEit data breach occurred, and more than 130 companies have been reported as being hit and exposed by the connected attacks.

Hillsborough County is a location in the middle of Florida, with a current population of approximately 1. 4 million. The county is tasked with managing and protecting the information of a huge number of people, and it failed to do so recently.

HCA Healthcare is one of the largest health systems in the United States today. The company has millions of patients and manages data for countless hospitals, private practices, specialty offices, and more.

Idaho is home to many popular universities that serve millions of students annually. Seven of the schools in Idaho were recently impacted by a data breach that resulted in a substantial amount of lost information.

Created in 1901, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was established to remove several challenges to US Industrial competitiveness.

In today's competitive world, everybody is looking for ways to innovate and make use of new technologies. Web scraping has gone mainstream across the internet with multiple tools and techniques that can scrape entire websites in minutes.

TD Ameritrade is a large-scale investment company with more than 11 million clients throughout the world. The organization has more than 6,000 independent investment advisors, manages more than $1 trillion in assets, and is a big deal in the investing community.

Healthcare companies and insurance providers were hard hit this week in a slew of data breaches. Some of the breaches happened long ago, while others are fresh, but either way, it's clear that medical companies are being targeted heavily by hackers.

Shell is one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world today. The organization is based in London, England, and has branches in many countries throughout the world, including the United States.

Imagine360 is a Pennsylvania-based company that works with employers to develop custom health plans for their workers. The organization specializes in helping companies save money on insurance while giving better insurance to their employees.

ARx is a healthcare provider based in Kansas. The company specializes in drug delivery systems and works with many different healthcare facilities.

Advanced Medical Management is a technical and healthcare management service that offers administrative and technical support to healthcare companies.

Money laundering is a crime with roots dating back nearly 2000 years ago. Hiding profits from extortion and greedy government officials, Chinese merchants converted profits into hard assets and moved them out of the territory.

Cloud computing began in the 1960s with remote job entry, and due to its rapid growth led to full-time sharing systems by the 70s.

The Charles George VA Medical Center is a large facility located in Asheville, North Carolina. The center offers healthcare services to veterans, starting with primary care and telemedicine and moving on to specialized care.

It has been another significant week for data breaches in the United States. TSMC, the largest semiconductor company in the world, was hit by an attack that will impact major companies like Apple and others, and so were a huge number of insurance companies.

USAA Auto Insurance is one of the leading insurance companies in the country today and is known for offering reliable coverage to many people in the country.

TSMC is the world's largest semiconductor company with the greatest value. The organization was founded in 1987 and is based in Taiwan.

Talcott Resolution Life Insurance is a newer company founded in 2018. The organization specializes in life insurance and annuity offerings.

Jackson National Life Insurance is based in Lansing, Michigan, and was founded in 1961. This insurance and annuities company offers retail brokerage services and offers asset management services to its customers.

Every organization on the planet, from small mom and pops with a computer to multinational conglomerates, must concern themselves with the complexities of cyber threats.

The age-old question, data or information; what was created first? Information is defined by the raw data components that it represents.

The University of California, or UCLA, is a public university in Los Angeles, California. The school serves approximately 32,000 students each term and is well-known as a leading public University in the United States.

Nobody is safe from the latest round of data breaches plaguing American government offices, major corporations, and school districts.

ChatGPT is a well-known Ai tool that automates different chat services. Many business owners, professionals, and individuals are now using this tool to automate tasks in their lives.

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are both known for offering a long list of destinations throughout the United States and some other parts of the world.

The NYC Department of Education manages all the public schools throughout the New York City metro area. More than 1. 1 million students go to the managed schools, and the organization oversees all this activity while handling data for these students.

"CalPERS headquarters at Lincoln Plaza in Sacramento" by Coolcaesar is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Network security has become increasingly significant due to the growing number and sophistication of cyber threats. Unsecured networks are particularly vulnerable to various risks.

Inventions of the microchip and transistors in the late 1950s ushered in a digital transformation, unlike any other evolutionary phenomenon in history.

Fort Worth is the fifth largest city in the state of Texas and approximately the 12th largest in the United States. The city is home to over 900,000 people and maintains a staff of thousands of individuals.

Healthcare services offered by the government and private agencies took a serious hit this week with breaches against Johns Hopkins, Essen Health Care, Atrium Health at Wake Forest, and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is a government organization that offers free or low-cost services to Idaho citizens to provide for their health and well-being.

Atrium Health is a major health services provider for primary care and specialty care at Wake Forest in North Carolina. The service provides care to thousands of individuals and manages data for all those people.

Buying your own home is the American Dream, but it might seem out of reach to those with bad credit. However, the good news is, if your credit is less than perfect, you do still have options and in most cases, can still buy a home.

Any good IT article on computers and network security will address the importance of strong, secure passwords. However, the challenge of good passwords is that most people have a hard time remembering them, so they use simple or obvious ones that pose a security risk.

Senior scams are becoming a major epidemic for two reasons. First, seniors often have a lot of money in the bank from a life of working hard and saving.

The dark web, also known as the "darknet", is a portion of the internet that lies outside the boundaries of traditional search engines.

Your Wi-Fi network is another handy access point that hackers use to infiltrate your computers, steal your identity, and grab your personal details.

Six databases that were owned by Friend Finder Networks, Inc. suffered a massive data breach in 2016, which cost 412 million users their accounts.

In this highly digital age, it is near impossible to erase all information online about yourself, but you can do a lot to remove online information and minimize your risk of identity theft or worse. 

With all our technology and connectedness comes a price, vulnerability. Now more than ever before, our credit and identities are at risk from cybercriminals, thieves, and hackers.