The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of cloud services across all industries, but particularly for healthcare providers. If your healthcare organization is considering moving your email from on-premise servers to the cloud, you must do your due diligence around significant security drawbacks that may overshadow the perceived benefits.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a boon for bad actors across the digital landscape. In July, for instance, authorities in the U.S., U.K. and Canada all issued warnings about serious cyberattacks against healthcare organizations and others involved in the coronavirus response. The purpose of these attacks? Theft of intellectual property during the race to develop a vaccine. The tool of choice? Spear-phishing email attacks.
Online scams are nothing new -- but as email has evolved and improved, so have scammers and the messages they send. Nefarious emails, attachments and links now appear sophisticated and look legitimate, sometimes tricking even the most meticulous user.
Email is the preferred communication method for businesses around the world. It’s also the preferred attack vector for cybercriminals due to its ease of use and low cost, and since the beginning days of email, spam techniques have continued to evolve into a variety of sophisticated threats.
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Office 365 is one of the world’s most commonly used software packages -- it’s in use by more than 1 million companies worldwide. The software suite announced more than 200 million individual users back in October 2019 and is adding about 3 million users each month.
Staying informed of the latest data privacy regulations as they apply to healthcare can be challenging. Not only are there a plethora of different security and retention requirements, but the risk of failure is higher than in any other sector:
The COVID-19 crisis has changed the way we approach data privacy and email security as the transition to working from home has been accompanied by a growing surge of Coronavirus themed phishing scams and spoofed websites used to distribute malware or lure victims into providing confidential information.
This week, we learned of a new phishing campaign targeting PayPal users in an attempt to extract as much personal data as possible.
Despite the rumors announcing the death of email, its use continues to grow. According to research from the Radicati Group, email traffic is predicted to grow to over 333.2 billion emails sent per day (from the current 306.4 billion emails). And as long as businesses continue to use email, cybercriminals will find new ways to exploit security gaps, software bugs, and basic human nature to extort millions of dollars from their victims.
At about this time last year, Office 365 had around 155 million users, and businesses continue to adopt its services at a rate of around 3 million users per month. But as subscription rates continue to grow, it becomes a growing target for cybercriminals to spread phishing and ransomware attacks.
