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US insurance giant Allianz Life announced on July 26 that hackers had stolen the personal information of many of its customers, financial professionals, and select Allianz Life employees in the United States.  The insurance giant's filing with Maine's attorney general did not immediately provide the number of customers affected.  According to the filing, the data breach, which the company described as a hack, occurred on July 16 and was discovered on July 17. 

TechCrunch first reported the data

Attackers continue to exploit insecure DNS configurations to hijack domain names and redirect users to malicious sites for scams, malware distribution, and other nefarious activities.  Recently, a threat actor tracked by Infoblox as "Hazy Hawk" has been leveraging a different version of the attack vector to seize control of abandoned cloud resources, such as S3 buckets and Azure endpoints, linked to prominent organizations.  Infoblox observed the threat actor using the hijacked domains to host a

Businesses are more likely to face a costly cyber-crime attack than a robbery or fire this year as hackers continue to employ devious social-engineering skills to lure unsuspecting victims.  This reality has been highlighted in several reports by global cybersecurity experts who have analyzed cybercrimes, such as ransomware (where hackers encrypt and steal data), smishing (SMS link scams) and phishing (email link/attachment scams) in recent years and have warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Cybercrime and cyber espionage activity continue to multiply against all industries and sectors, causing financial and material damage to targeted networks.  Cyber insurance has assisted in mitigating the impacts of cyber malfeasance, offsetting costs associated with recovering from cyber-attacks.  A Government Accountability Office report found that the increasing severity and frequency of cyberattacks led more organizations to seek cyber coverage, which has been increasing in price as the volu

Some new business models are too good to be true, especially if they serve criminals.  Many ransomware-wielding attackers continue to rely on several Cybercrime-as-a-Service providers to support their ability to easily gain access to targets and steal data.  An increasing number of ransomware operations also run data leak sites to pressure nonpaying victims into meeting attackers' ransom demands, researchers say.   One star player in the ransomware ecosystem remains the initial access brokers.  

Insurance 101: Income (premiums) must exceed outgoings (claims) by around 30% (operating costs + profit).  If claims increase, so must premiums for the insurance model to remain viable.  And for the insurance companies to remain solvent and in business.

Cyber Insurance 102:  The cost of cybercrime is rising dramatically and has been doing so consistently for many years. Continually increasing premiums to counter continuously increasing claims is ultimately unsustainable.  Soon, the cost of insur

U.S. crime-fighting agencies testified in front of Congress during the last week of July 2021, and the hearing had a chilling title: "America Under Cyber Siege: Preventing and Responding to Ransomware Attacks"

Since January 2021, ransomware attacks have disrupted critical infrastructure, the food supply, IT management, healthcare, education, transportation, and many other sectors of the economy.For the most part, criminal and nation-state actors continue to launch attacks with little fear of fac

Birds of a Feather, Flock together.  An old, yet very true saying.  Cybercriminals are stealing a staggering volume of data and money from companies around the world. The damage from cyber-attacks costs businesses US$400 billion a year.  This has become a huge criminal enterprise and operators include state sponsored groups, such as Russia, China and North Korea.

Cybercrime groups have become more organized and specialized in the past few years.  Gone are the days of single actors placing malwar

Global Cybercrime Market Revenue Surged to $1.7 Billion in 2020, Chainalysis reports.  Underground markets continue to thrive despite being regularly targeted by international law enforcement agencies and site administrators often steal buyers' and sellers' cryptocurrency via "exit scams" and users get ripped off.

Darknet markets persist because users are willing to risk losing funds, risk arrest and will keep their loses quiet if scammed.  Yet, for anyone who wants to buy or sell ‘illegal’ good

The number of attacks related to Emotet continue to spike after the dangerous botnet re-emerged over the summer with a fresh phishing and spam campaign that is primarily infecting devices with a banking Trojan, according to new research from HP-Bromium, an end-point security company.

Emotet is a malware strain and a cybercrime operation. The malware, also known as Geodo and Mealybug, was first detected in 2014 and remains active, deemed one of the most prevalent threats of 2019. First versions o

Ransomware attacks remain the top cyber-enabled threat seen by law enforcement agencies.  But phishing campaigns, business email compromises, and other types of fraud that are now using COVID-19 themes are increasing.  Red Sky Alliance has members, clients, and readers from around the world and this article has been written from the European Union viewpoint, which actually applies internationally to global defense against cyber-crimes.  Our source is the seventh annual Internet Organized Crime T