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Landmark Admin, a third-party administrator (TPA) specializing in administrative support services for life insurance and annuity companies, has confirmed suffering a serious ransomware attack recently.

The company revealed the news in a filing with the Maine Office of the Attorney General, in which it said that people’s data was stolen in an attack which took place in mid-May 2024.

Following the breach, Landmark Admin shut down its IT systems and remote access to its network to contain the effects, and brought in third-party security experts, who found the personal information of 806,519 people had been stolen.

Identity theft

“The forensic investigation determined that data was encrypted and exfiltrated from Landmark’s system,” the company said. “However, there was insufficient evidence available to identify which files had been compromised. The unauthorized activity occurred between May 13, 2024, and June 17, 2024.”

When the investigation concluded, the company understood that the information grabbed by the hackers included first name/initial and last name; address; Social Security number; tax identification number; driver's license number/state-issued identification card; passport number; financial account number; medical information; date of birth; health insurance policy number; and life and annuity policy information.

"Please note that the information above varies for each potentially impacted individual. Affected individuals will be notified by mail of information that was impacted,” Landmark said.

So far, no threat actors assumed responsibility for the attack, so we don’t know if there were any ransom demands.

Since the information stolen is highly sensitive, users are advised to be extra vigilant for potential phishing attacks, social engineering, or possible wire fraud. Landmark is offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection services through IDX, which include 12 months of credit and CyberScan monitoring, a $1,000,000 insurance reimbursement policy, and fully managed id theft recovery services.

Via BleepingComputer

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Generative AI is completely transforming the way we build, use and even think about technology. Recent advancements have ignited a new era of innovation, one that McKinsey predicts could provide a $4.4 trillion jolt to the global economy.

The next great AI product could come from anyone, anywhere, and change everyone’s lives. Yet, a handful of Big Tech companies in the United States still control much of the world’s cloud computing infrastructure. These hyperscalers embody the ethos of Silicon Valley with their ambitious goals and aggressive strategies. They’re territorial and competitive and, while that can lead to exceptional service for some customers, it can jeopardize others.

These companies’ cloud supremacy is stifling innovation. By making developers increasingly dependent on their services, they command an unfair share of the market, shutting out smaller cloud startups that often provide more agile, affordable solutions.

If we want to truly unlock the transformative potential of AI, we need to promote a more democratic cloud: one where developers have the freedom to choose their vendors and compose the ideal cloud infrastructure for their goals. This will promote interoperability, streamline the application development lifecycle and ultimately lead to better-performing AI products and services.

The traditional Hyperscalers

The Big Three – Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud – were once the Only Three. As recently as eight years ago, these providers were virtually the sole option for any organization working in the cloud.

The environment has since changed rapidly. People say “every company is a tech company” now, and research shows it’s true. It’s not only major enterprises and world governments that require substantial cloud support, but startups, mid-market players and even companies whose primary offering isn’t a technology product at all.

However, one organization’s “substantial” is another’s overload. What might be a useful feature to an international megacorporation might be a massive obstacle to a small AI developer. Product overload creates more inefficiencies than advantages, and those inefficiencies will eventually offload to the customer, as applications won’t be able to meet performance demands.

The Big Three are notorious for product overload; in their efforts to out-innovate their competition, they sidle their customers with complicated features that most of them will never need. That said, the solution is not to oust the Big Three in a cloud marketplace coup, but to create a more equitable cloud ecosystem overall – and that starts with letting businesses know they have options.

Hope in the independent market

The AI boom is accelerating the growth of independent cloud providers. Beyond supporting cloud engineers, developers need expanded solutions for their data science teams, whose work in training and maintaining the AI requires diverse computational resources. This need has precipitated a groundswell of demand for leaner, cheaper cloud providers.

Independent clouds allow smaller businesses to develop, test and deploy in accordance with their unique business needs. However, “independent” certainly doesn’t mean scrappy or new to the market. These providers are running on the latest products in data centers situated at strategic locations around the world, and their solutions are helping businesses to scale and meet demand.

Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud adoption has also ramped up, with developers seeking improved flexibility and scalability. In orchestrating operations across multiple clouds, companies can save money while composing a computational toolkit that best enables their growth.

This ballooning independent cohort is also challenging the longstanding US-centricity of the cloud market. Deployment on the edge requires localized support, and when developers can build close to home while deploying close to their customers, they’ll provide better software performance while simultaneously streamlining their development and testing operations. Independent clouds are highly suited to this sort of agility, and they’re popping up all over the world.

Democratizing the cloud for AI and beyond

Democratizing the cloud is crucial to the sustainability of AI development. AI workloads are highly resource-intensive, and at the current pace of innovation, future AI programs will require even more complex solutions to bear the processing load. ChatGPT is far from the final frontier, and as generative AI becomes smarter and more capable, developers will need more custom cloud options. When businesses first migrated to the cloud, many got locked into a single vendor, and they don’t plan on repeating this with AI. By improving the accessibility of composable, multi-cloud strategies, we can enable businesses of all sizes and scopes to scale.

Don’t get it wrong. The Big Three have their place in a democratized cloud marketplace – they offer valuable services, and they can provide the vast computational power that the world’s mega-enterprises require. But for the other 90%, we need a flourishing independent market to promote the innovation that will deliver an AI-powered future. In the age of AI, every organization in every region around the globe should have the power to build, test and deploy ML-driven, cloud-native applications.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Cisco has issued an emergency fix for bugs in some of its software which are being actively exploited in the wild.

According to a security advisory from the company, the flaw that was patched was found in Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), and in Firepower Threat Defense (FTD). It is described as a resource exhaustion vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-20481. It was given a medium severity rating of 5.8.

Describing the theory behind the attack, Cisco says an attacker could send a large number of VPN authentication requests to a vulnerable device, exhausting its resources. That leads to a Denial-of-Service (DoS) state of the Remote Access VPN (RAVPN) service. Furthermore, since the attackers are sending authentication requests, one just might work (depending on the strength of the login credentials), giving the miscreants unauthorized network access.

Abused in the wild

Depending on the impact of the attack, the victims may need to restore the RAVPN service, Cisco explained.

The good news is that the bug affects only those devices with remote access VPN (RAVPN) service enabled. The bad news is the bug is actively being exploited in the wild, and there is no workaround. Cisco said it is "aware of malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory," and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the bug to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

Cisco’s VPN tools are hugely popular across the world, and are being equally used by both SMBs and large enterprises. Therefore, they are a major target for cybercriminals looking to weasel their way into corporate IT infrastructure.

In fact, the company’s cybersecurity department, Talos, recently warned it’s tracking an increase in brute-force attacks against VPNs, The Register reminds. "These attacks all appear to be originating from TOR exit nodes and a range of other anonymizing tunnels and proxies," Talos said.

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Cybersecurity is an ever-evolving field and cannot be set up once and then forgotten. As data and applications move to the cloud, businesses can enjoy various benefits, but many struggle to protect their networks from constantly changing cyber threats. Ransomware attackers have recognized the value of targeting smaller organizations and tailored their attacks to exploit businesses that they believe will pay immediately, often supported by cyber insurance, rather than investing in defense measures.

Tight security for data and resources is crucial for ensuring that business operations run smoothly and are not disrupted to the point of closure. However, how can small and medium-sized businesses achieve comprehensive security management and threat intelligence while on a budget? The solution lies in forming partnerships and alliances.

Implementing shared threat intelligence across an alliance of cybersecurity experts creates a stronger security approach. Vendors can now offer integrated security through strategic cybersecurity cooperation, shared telemetry, and threat intelligence. The combined resources are more effective than individual offerings, enabling the development of a more sophisticated security ecosystem necessary to combat modern cyber threats.

Adapting existing solutions with Shared Telemetry

Collecting and analyzing data across different parts of the technology stack provides valuable insights for defending and optimizing your business's IT infrastructure. Instead of operating in isolated environments, it's important to treat your security stack as a constantly evolving ecosystem. Simply layering one solution on top of another in your legacy infrastructure is not enough. Each integration interacts with other elements, identifying weaknesses and aiming to address evolving security challenges.

Shared telemetry and threat intelligence gather information about the individual IT components working together as one complete infrastructure, which allows for more thorough data monitoring and analysis. Operators can suddenly see the bigger picture more easily. This isn’t limited to significant security platforms but becomes possible with existing vendors offering public API integrations. Mimecast reported that over 200 API integrations are now available as part of their ongoing security ecosystem, which provides even more insight than their already powerful Microsoft partnerships.

Access to expertise and collaborative threat intelligence

Automated security technology isn’t enough to keep up with modern challenges; having expert eyes on your cybersecurity 24/7/365 is necessary and gives businesses the peace of mind that their network is being tightly monitored. However, due to the growing shortage of cybersecurity talent, millions of businesses are now choosing from a far more competitive IT talent pool for roles integral to securing their operations. Limited resources and budgets mean that smaller businesses are more likely to miss out on high-quality professionals.

Cybersecurity leaders have access to top talent and resources to secure their operations. Smaller businesses can rely on their cybersecurity provider to enhance their cybersecurity profile. Cybersecurity information-sharing partnerships go even further by uniting experts from all allied partners. This allows all businesses to utilize top-notch cybersecurity for a collaborative approach to threat intelligence.

MSPs, as primary targets for cyber-attacks, have realized that having expert security partnerships provides better protection against advanced attacks. This enhanced security trickles down as part of the services they offer to their clients. Businesses can be confident that they will have access to a security expert who can address their specific security needs, rather than requiring an in-house IT security professional with advanced expertise in all security technologies. The importance of this specialized knowledge cannot be overstated.

Keep your cloud backups up to date to avoid disruptions

IT security company Sophos reported that 94% of ransomware victims in 2023 had cybercriminals targeting their cloud backups, with 57% of these backup compromise attempts being successful. Ransomware and payment demands were also found to double when successfully compromised, meaning that ongoing preventative cybersecurity strategies are no longer as simple as relying on just a single cloud backup solution.

Utilizing immutable cloud backups should be a core focus for any business’ security strategy in 2024. By relying on the integrations of high-profile and industry-respected allied partners, such as Sophos and Veeam, or more recently Veeam and Microsoft, companies gain the greater peace of mind that multiple indicators across your estate keep your data secure.

Since these are allied technology partners, there is no need to worry about migrating from one system to another. Unified management across solutions ensures that they work together effectively, providing a greater return on investment from the start. This eliminates concerns about leaving the door open to attacks, as more security tools usually require greater management.

Don't worry about security - focus on your customers

Understanding which solution is best for your business may seem daunting at first. However, this is where your MSP can step in to provide advice. By tailoring their offering to your specific needs, you can be assured that you are not buying services you don't need. You can also trust that the heavy lifting of security is in the hands of the right experts - experts who share their security knowledge with each other for a united approach to threat intelligence.

With the combined power of allied resources and support, business owners have the advantage in the ongoing battle against cybersecurity threats. By entrusting security to a trusted entity, they can concentrate on their core business activities, spending fewer hours concerned about security and more time on strategies to help their business grow.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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American healthcare giant Henry Schein has finally reported suffering ransomware attacks to the US government, almost a year after the incidents took place.

The company has filed a data breach notification with the Office of the Maine Attorney General detailing the attacks in October 2024 by the now-defunct BlackCat (AKA ALPHV) ransomware operation, which broke into its systems and stole 35TB of sensitive company data.

The details about the nature of the stolen files were not disclosed, so we don’t know if they include payment information, banking data, or more.

Identity theft

The company allegedly tried to negotiate with the crooks to have the files deleted, but the negotiations broke down. This resulted in the second break-in, by the same threat actor, approximately a month later. After that, the crooks started leaking the information stolen in the attack, and threatened to encrypt the systems for the third time. We don’t know if that ever happened, since only a portion of the data was allegedly leaked.

Now, in the data breach notification, Henry Schein confirmed that the number of affected individuals is 166,432.

“Please be assured that, upon discovery of the incident, our cybersecurity team immediately took a series of steps, including taking certain systems offline and other steps intended to contain the incident, hiring cybersecurity experts, conducting an investigation to identify and remove any malicious files and determine company systems that were impacted, and seeking to implement measures to fortify our defenses going forward,” the company said in its announcement.

It is now offering affected individuals identity theft detection and resolution tools through Experian, for a period of two years.

Henry Schein is a Fortune 500 company and one of the global leaders in its industry, providing healthcare solutions, as well as the distribution of medical, dental, and veterinary supplies. It supports healthcare practitioners and institutions worldwide with essential equipment, software, and consulting services. It has a presence in 32 countries and annual revenues of $12 billion.

Via BleepingComputer

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The number of people affected by the Change Healthcare ransomware attack earlier in 2024 is now thought to have affected around 100 million people, new reports have confirmed.

The attack on Change Healthcare took place in February 2024, and is now thought to be the most disruptive ransomware attacks ever to strike the US healthcare industry after the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights updated the number on its data breach portal to 100 million.

"On October 22, 2024, Change Healthcare notified OCR that approximately 100 million individual notices have been sent regarding this breach," the Office for Civil Rights stated on its FAQ page.

Snowflake and MFA

The attack saw an affiliate of the dreaded ALPHV ransomware organization (AKA BlackCat) breach Change Healthcare to steal 6TB of sensitive customer data.

The information stolen included health insurance information (health plans and policies, insurance companies, different ID numbers, Medicaid-Medicare-government payor ID numbers), health information (medical record numbers, diagnoses, tests and results, care and treatment data, medicines), billing, claims, and payment information (claim numbers, account numbers, payment cards, financial and banking information, and more), and other personally identifiable information (Social Security Numbers, driver’s license numbers, and more).

Change Healthcare ended up paying $22 million in ransom in exchange for the data. The money never made it to the affiliates responsible for the attack, and was instead grabbed by the ransomware’s operators (who were only to receive a portion of the payment), which later shut down its infrastructure and disappeared, leaving the affiliate holding the data.

That affiliate later started their own ransomware operation and are today known as RansomHub - and since RansomHub never posted the stolen data, many speculate that a second ransom may have been paid.

The cyberattack sent ripples throughout the healthcare system, preventing doctors and pharmacies from filing claims, and preventing pharmacies from accepting discount cards.

Via BleepingComputer

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