Tag: Hackers

  • Tesla Proves People are First Line of Cyber Defense

    By now, most of you have surely read or heard about the Tesla employee who turned down a lot of money to help a hacker break into the company. Who wouldn’t want $1 million to plug in a USB drive? As a business owner, how confident are you that an employee wouldn’t take this deal?

    This is a fantastic story, and I’m happy to see the integrity of this employee. Yeah, a million dollars is amazing but he was part of a great story and took down someone that could have cost his employer millions more.  

    This type of situation is extreme compared to most others we’ve seen. A lot of times it takes only $100 to convince a cleaning person or security guard to do this. Sometimes, just $50 can get an employee to open the door for an attacker so they can do it themselves.

    And don’t forget about extortion. We’ve seen situations where a C-Level person was blackmailed into giving up a password to a system or plugging in a drive because an affair or some other secret was discovered. 

    This story proves that people are watching and doing a very good job of knowing their staff. Technology can help in these types of situations but training and integrity are the keys here. This employee was honest and saved Tesla millions of dollars in potential ransom, not to mention the bad publicity and potential loss of intellectual property. 

    I hope they rewarded him with the million dollars he was originally offered.

  • When There’s More than Money on the Line

    In our line of work, reading about the latest cybersecurity breach instinctively raises the questions of how many records were lost or how much money did it cost to recover. Hackers are most always after the big payoff, either directly or indirectly, so we’re conditioned to think mainly in terms of economic losses, privacy issues, or damage to a company’s reputation. However, as more and more devices are connected to the Internet, the stakes can be much higher.

    Computer Weekly reported in June that cyberattacks against healthcare facilities had increased 15-fold between January and March of 2020 — coinciding with the COVID-19 outbreak. Think about that for a second. With our hospitals and medical personnel facing a global pandemic with overburdened resources, the bad guys seized the opportunity to ramp up their attacks. Not only hospitals, but the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) were targets as well.

    Although we at Raxis enjoy our jobs, we never forget the true nature of the people we’re trying to stop. And we always remember the hard-working people we’re trying to help.

    One such person is my friend, Judy Chang, a senior nurse in a local hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). As I thought about the potential impacts of a major health care breach, I thought it might be a good idea to introduce Judy to our friends and readers, so I set up a conversation with this front-line hero who works with some of the most vulnerable patients anywhere — the newborn babies who need intensive care in the first hours and days of their lives.

    I encourage you to watch the interview and hear Judy describe her work to help these struggling infants. As you do, consider the impacts of a cyber breach that impacts her team and the sensitive equipment they rely on. As much as I enjoy my work, her story helps me remember that cybersecurity doesn’t just protect networks — it also protects innocent lives.