1.) Edinburgh University online servers witnessed a disruption yesterday and sources report that the websites under the University’s online domain were crippled by a cyber attack during the freshers week.
Jisc, the ISP of the said educational institution confirmed that there was indeed an attack on the organization’s domain. But failed to disclose any details related to the attack and its impact. However, a spokesperson from the University said that no personal data or critical info was compromised in the attack and added that the law enforcement of UK is aware of the latest incident.
2.) In other news, the Department of Human Services (DHS) is said to be hosting a three-day event where teams of tech experts are surrounding a city made of Lego to defend it from a cyber attack.
Called as “Shell Cove” the city will help the Australian authorities defend their IT assets against simulated cyber attacks. The event which is being organized for the second time this year in Canberra has witnessed representatives from DHS, Home Affairs, Defense and Agencies. There will be two teams- One to launch cyber attacks and the other to defend the city from it.
Micheal Keenan, the Minister of Human Services, Australia said that such events will help public and private entities to defend themselves from security threats prevailing in the current cyber landscape.
3.) Columbus based Life Planning company ‘Ohio Living’ which has over 12 residential communities has disclosed that it has become a victim of a cyber attack in July this year.
A spokesperson from the company said that some of the employee email accounts might have breached during the incident and details such as names, contact info, social security numbers, financial info, date of births, medical record numbers, patient ID info, medical or clinical info and diagnosis and treatment info including insurance card numbers might have been accessed by the hackers.
The exact number of impacted accounts is yet to be known. But the company says that it disabled all the compromised email accounts of its employees and has also changed the passwords of others. It hinted that the attack could be of Phishing Email genre.
4.) The Israeli Government has decided to invest USD $ 2.7 million to increase the cyber defense infrastructure of the factories running in its region. The announcement was made yesterday by the National Cyber Directorate of Israel which works from the Prime Minister’s Office.
The decision was made to save industrial plants from being disrupted by cyber attacks. Since attacks on factories with hazardous materials can prove fatal to environments leading to security consequences, the government of Israel has decided to offer special digital care to such entities.
Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that the government of Israel will offer such investment to ‘essential enterprises’ which operate for purposes of state protection, public security, and maintenance of essential amenities during emergencies. This includes those services serving civilians during the time of war or mass disaster- like health, sanitation, water utilities, food, electricity, and such.
Thence, all the organization serving with the above said purposes will receive 50% risk survey costs and 40 % of the cost of equipping and deploying cyber protection systems and services. And to provide such assistance, the government will be shelling out around $62,000 on every entity.
Israel’s plan to fund for the cyber defenses of entities operating in its region is being supported by the Israel National Cyber Directorate, the Investment Authority at the Ministry of Economy, National Emergency Authority at the Ministry of Defense and the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance.
