Data breaches continue to skyrocket. According to the 2021 Mid Year Data Breach QuickView report from Risk Based Security, there were 1,767 data breaches in the first half of this year, exposing almost 19 billion records. The severity of breaches is also increasing, with two incidents exposing more than 1 billion records.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is one of the most significant business challenges that organizations face today. The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that global business losses from cybercrime reached nearly $1 trillion in 2020, almost double the previous year’s losses. Cybersecurity is a risk management issue that requires board-level oversight.
In its June 2021 “Patch Tuesday” release, Microsoft addressed a local privilege escalation weakness in the Windows Print Spooler service. However, researchers soon found a more serious vulnerability in the service — a remote code execution attack called PrintNightmare. Microsoft issued an out-of-band patch to fix this vulnerability, and urged administrators to apply it immediately.
Managing and maintaining an on-premises data center comes with costs and challenges that often divert resources from business-enabling initiatives. In light of that, many organizations are looking to get out of the data center business by moving IT infrastructure offsite. By utilizing the services of a co-location facility, organizations can reduce overhead and improve the reliability of their IT environment.
The FBI released a bulletin on May 21, 2021, warning of ransomware attacks targeting healthcare and first responder networks. The law enforcement agency said it had identified at least 16 incidents of Conti ransomware attacks that affected the networks of U.S. healthcare facilities and first responders, including 911 dispatchers, emergency medical services, law enforcement and municipalities.
