New Hacking Attempt: Experts Are Advising East Coast Businesses to Be on the Lookout

The Colonial pipeline cyber attack is a hack that managed to take down the largest fuel pipeline in the United States. This resulted in shortages through the East coast. According to a consultant who specializes in cybersecurity and responded to the attack states it was all due to a single compromised password. 

Colonial Pipeline

All because of this, experienced hackers managed to get entry to Colonial Pipeline networks on the 29th April 2021. This then through a virtual private account allowed access to the company’s computer network remotely for the employees. It is said that the account the hackers used to gain access to the network at Colonial pipeline was no longer in use but still able to access the network at the company. 

After this hacking attempt that took down the Colonial pipeline has even urged President Biden to take action. Alongside other cybersecurity national problems like Microsoft’s exchange server which was vulnerable and affected over 60,000 organizations. Also, there was a hacking issue at SolarWinds which last year resulted in a compromise to 9 different federal agencies.

Executive Order

So President Biden feels it is time the white house took some action. There was an executive order. This outlined different initiatives. This includes mandating the deployment of multi-factor authentication in the federal government, reducing the barrier that shares information between the private and government-run sectors. It also mentioned creating a cybersecurity safety review board which is inspired by the National Transportation Safety Board. It would create a standard playbook for response to cyber incidents. 

Increase in Attacks

In 2020 there was a global increase of ransomware attacks of 485% according to Bitdefender. In relation to cyber incidents, this accounts for a quarter of them. With these incidents, the costs have totaled to an estimate of $20 billion. The attacks of Ransomware which was a threat to release data that was stolen have also increased and in the first 3 months of 2021, they were 77% of the total cybersecurity attacks. 

There are certain business and location sectors that are more favorable to cybersecurity attackers but all over the world every sector of business is targeted. Even small businesses can hold valuable information and can be easier to gain access to. Some small businesses may be completely unsecured against attacks and can be a focal point for cybersecurity threats and attacks. 

Experts are urging all businesses big and small to conduct audits and risk assessments and see how at risk they really are. They are also advising businesses of all sizes to increase their security and protect their businesses and their customers. 

IT Company

One of the ways they can do this is by using an IT company in Connecticut to handle all of your IT issues and protect you from cybersecurity and Ransomware attacks. It is advisable that you outsource to the experts in these areas if you aren’t particularly computer savvy or knowledgable in these issues that can arise. It can be very costly and harmful to your business if anything does go wrong. So stay protected.