It seems like every other day we learn news of another cyberattack, a data breach, or even a notification to our personal email from HaveIBeenPwned. Across an increasingly complex data landscape, it can feel like cybersecurity is at times one step behind the attackers. However, for each attack that slips through systems, hard-working cybersecurity software and companies are thwarting thousands of other attempts.
2020: Cybercrime booms
2020 wasn’t just the year that everything came crashing down because of a pandemic virus. It was also a year of some very large movements in cybercrime.
Solarwinds hack
It was the year that news broke that one of the biggest hacks in history had happened. In December 2020, the cybersecurity world was abuzz with news of the Solarwinds hack.
Solarwinds is an IT and network management software suite, with products used and trusted by many of the world’s top companies and government agencies. The hack itself was on a Solarwinds product – Orion, with hackers gaining access to Solarwinds systems to inject malicious code into Orion, which was then unknowingly rolled out to customers from March 2020.
The code allowed attackers access to organizations such as Microsoft, Cisco, Deloitte, the Pentagon, and the Department of Homeland Security. The hack was only uncovered when cybersecurity firm FireEye noticed the breach within their own systems – by which time data theft had occurred across the board. This is known as a supply chain…
