Energy & Utility August 16, 2022

X-Force 2022 Insights: An Expanding OT Threat Landscape

9 min read - This post was written with contributions from Dave McMillen. So far 2022 has seen international cyber security agencies issuing multiple alerts about malicious Russian cyber operations and potential attacks on critical infrastructure, the discovery of two new OT-specific pieces of…

Application Security May 26, 2022

Lessons Learned by 2022 Cyberattacks: X-Force Threat Intelligence Report

3 min read - Every year, the IBM Security X-Force team of cybersecurity experts mines billions of data points to reveal today’s most urgent security statistics and trends. This year’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022 digs into attack types, infection vectors, top threat actors,…

Malware April 13, 2022

Where Everything Old is New Again: Operational Technology and Ghosts of Malware Past

7 min read - This post was written with contributions from IBM Security X-Force’s Michael Worley. Operational technology (OT) — the networks that control industrial control system processes — face a more complex challenge than their IT counterparts when it comes to updating operating…

Zero Trust February 23, 2022

Ransomware Resilience Tops Findings in X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022

7 min read - For the third year in a row, ransomware was the top attack type globally in 2021, despite some successes last year by law enforcement to take down ransomware groups. This was among the top findings of IBM Security’s latest research…

Incident Response December 27, 2021

2021 Manufacturing and Supply Chain Security Roundup

4 min read - In 2020, ransomware actors demanded $17 million from a laptop maker and $34 million from a Taiwanese electronics contract company. The past two years have also delivered major disruptions for supply chains. The pandemic pushed supply chain attack issues front-and-center, with disruptions up…

News July 5, 2021

Amateur Critical Infrastructure Attacks Growing in Frequency, Relative Severity

3 min read - Low-sophistication operational technology (OT) attacks grew in frequency and relative severity over the previous few years, according to Mandiant. In doing so, they broadened the type of threat against which companies and governments need to defend their OT assets. Attackers…

News June 11, 2021

What’s Behind Rising Ransomware Costs?

3 min read - On June 9, 2021, the U.S. division of a global meat company paid $11 million to the attackers who targeted its facilities with ransomware. An executive at that division confirmed the payment to the Wall Street Journal and said it…

Application Security May 29, 2021

IoT Security: Why Food Industry Cyber Awareness Should Be Your Main Ingredient

4 min read - The food industry faces an uncertain future. Restaurants and prepared-food companies, food manufacturers, farmers and producers that survived the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 are heading into a new world. Some of the competition has been removed, new players are…

Energy & Utility May 4, 2021

It’s an Operational Technology World, and Attackers Are Living in It

5 min read - In April 2021, the U.S. government announced a new effort to protect industrial control systems (ICS) from cyberattacks. For the cybersecurity community, the announcement may come as no surprise. Vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure such as ICS and the operational technologies…

Advanced Threats March 31, 2021

Threat Actors’ Most Targeted Industries in 2020: Finance, Manufacturing and Energy

7 min read - IBM Security’s annual X-Force Threat Intelligence Index uses data derived from across our teams and managed customers to gather insights about the topmost targeted industries every year, helping organizations manage risk and resource investment in their security programs. When it…