With the flurry of recent news on cyber attacks, we provide a short summary of the big stories, and what areas charities can look at to address similar threats.
Recent news stories
Synnovis CEO confirms ransomware attack at London hospitals
Reports suggest this was a traditional ransomware attack on a key supplier, Synnovis, within the NHS. The issues raised for charities are:
- Managing suppliers
- Ransomware protection
- Disaster recovery / Business continuity
Snowflake Warns: Targeted Credential Theft Campaign Hits Cloud Customers
Santander and Ticketmaster were significantly compromised via Snowflake. Snowflake is a major Data Analytics / Data Warehouse platform, and this was a case of targeted identity compromise. The issues raised for charities are:
- Managing suppliers
- Security awareness training
- Identity management specifically MFA and SSO
TikTok hackers break in to CNN after targeting ‘high-profile accounts’ in ‘zero day’ attack
It appears that this was an exploit of a previously unknown (zero day) vulnerability in the messaging component of TikTok. The issues raised for charities are:
- Security awareness training
- Management of social media accounts
How to protect against threats
Managing suppliers
- It is important to have an InfoSec process for approving new applications, ideally bringing it into a single management system for approving and managing 3rd party applications.
- Agree an approach for supplier management.
- Work towards the ISO 27001 standard.
Ransomware protection
- Ensure all computers and servers have good Antivirus and malware protection in place.
- A large number of ransomware attacks start with phishing. Make sure emails are filtered for known phishing emails and links in emails redirected to be checked each time they are clicked on. O365 alerts if it believes someone has clicked on a link that later turns out to be malicious.
- Restrict VPN access to your charity’s devices only.
- Take regular tamper proof backups.
Business Continuity
- Create and test a corporate business continuity plan with external support as required.
- Develop a disaster recovery plan and testing.
Security Awareness training
- If you don’t already, ensure you have cyber security awareness training in place for all your staff. We offer affordable Cyber Security Training and Data Protection e-Learning specifically for charities – find out more here.
Identity management
- Ensure MFA is enforced for all users, and that geo blocking is in place.
- Regularly update policies for MFA, password managers and communicate changes to staff.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about any of the issues raised here, please do get in touch.
