99% of law firms in UK are at risk of email fraud

According to a recent study by OnDMARC, just one organisation out of the top 100 law firms in the UK has “sufficient measures in place to fully protect against email fraud”.

With an economic value of £25.7 billion to the UK economy and as a net exporter up 5.6% in real terms over 10 years (valued at £3.6 billion), the robust defense and protection of the UK’s law firms’ cyber presence is critical to law firms individually and collectively, to clients trust in the legal sector, to the economy and ‘to the very fabric of our society’. The SRA’s Risk Outlook report 2016/17 makes references to the increased instance of cyber crime acknowledging that it continues to be a significant concern for law firms. Moreover, the Risk Outlook report stated that a ‘quarter of law firms have been targeted by cyber criminals’,  while it was also suggested that the ‘true figure is likely to be higher’ as a result of under-reporting or the absence of detection, citing a report filed in 2015 by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The contention that cyber crime is under-reported is echoed by IBM’s CEO who commented that ‘a significant portion of cyber crime goes undetected, particularly industrial espionage where access to confidential documents and data is difficult to spot.

Given the innumerable types of cyber crimes that affect firms generally, it is unsurprising that the SRA Risk Outlook Report 13 referenced CEO fraud & Friday afternoon fraud. These represent a significant problem for businesses in terms of cash and data theft and the reputational damage which follows as a result when those systems are breached.

Top Cybersecurity Risks for Healthcare Industry

Despite the cyber threats facing healthcare organizations, 95 percent of IT specialists working at medical organizations around the world report that their organizations do not use any software for information security governance or risk management, according to the results of a 2017 IT Risks Survey.

Netwrix Corporation, provider of a visibility platform for data security and risk mitigation in hybrid environments, released the results of its Netwrix 2017 IT Risks report, which provides a look into IT security practices, pains, successful experiences and plans in the healthcare industry. The IT risks are divided into three areas: security, compliance and operations.

Read the netwrix.com blog here

Healthcare Data Breaches Top Reported Data Security Incident

A recent study revealed that healthcare data breaches accounted for 39 percent of data breaches in 2015.

Healthcare data breaches were the most common type of data security incident reported in 2015, according to a recent study by Symantec Corporation.

Researchers found that approximately 39 percent of breaches during the year occurred in the health services sub-sector.

“This comes as no surprise, given the strict rules within the healthcare industry regarding reporting of data breaches,” explained the authors of the study. “However, the number of identities exposed is relatively small in this industry. Such a high number of breaches with low numbers of identities tends to show that the data itself is quite valuable to warrant so many small breaches.”

Read more…