Cyber-security leapt into the spotlight yesterday with a confluence of three outages that most certainly caught the country’s attention!
‘First United Airlines halted all flights across the country due to a computer problem.
“We experienced a network connectivity issue,” they said on Twitter. “We are working to resolve and apologize for any inconvenience.”
Then the Wall Street Journal experienced “technical difficulties” and briefly redirected readers to a temporary site. The actual site is back up now.
This glitch came just as a huge financial news story broke, in which the New York Stock Exchange halted trading after experiencing “a technical issue.”(Source)
Coincidence? Conspiracy? (China Syndrome, NYSE Stock Suspension And Anonymous!)
We may not know now or ever what the actual stories are but, for businesses large and small, the sanctity of their computer systems, proprietary product information and customer data is nothing short of critical.
So who are some of the potential perpetrators of cyber-attacks?
Anonymous and Lizard Squad are two of the most well known but there are large numbers of other faceless and unnamed hackers working around the world who you need to protect your systems from!
Anonymous
Concerning the NYSE outage, on Tuesday night the group Anonymous ironically Tweeted this…
Lizard Squad
Yesterday the sentencing of a 17-year old member of Lizard Squad was announced and it sounds as if he could be right back in business…
‘A 17-year-old Lizard Squad member received a two-year suspended sentence from a Finland court on Tuesday despite being convicted of a whopping 50,700 charges. The charges, according to Finnish news outlet Kaleva, correspond with a lot of known Lizard Squad hacking activity, including online harassment, financial fraud, money laundering, and exposing company secrets…
…According to that prior trial report, prosecutors sought up to three years of jail time and a fine of 6,600 Euros for the teen defendant, and they noted that his attacks included targets like Harvard University…
…the teen has received a sentence comparable to American probation. There is no jail time nor restrictions on where he might go, and the defendant will be required to have his online activity monitored—as opposed to receiving an outright ban on online services…
…An apparent official Twitter feed for remaining Lizard Squad members posted defiant responses to the sentencing on Tuesday, saying that the group’s members have “free passes” to hack around the world and that “you can’t arrest a lizard, don’t they know that?” (Source)
Bottom-line? Protecting your computer systems now is definitely a much better way to proceed than having to deal with an attack later on!
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Article author Michael Haltman is the President of Hallmark Abstract Service in New York.
HAS is a provider of title insurance in New York State for residential and commercial real estate transactions.
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