Welcome to your Weekly Sentinel MCB™

Toronto, Canada, January 19, 2024 – This weekly newsletter is the product of manually curated news presented with the expert commentary of Claudiu Popa. As a weekly publication intended for media and information professionals, the objective is simply to outline common threads flowing through current news stories and identify opportunities to ask the questions that matter. Whether you are a professional journalist or a passionate subscriber, here is an opportunity for you to gain insights into the actual harms and what questions matter when it comes to the real impact of cybersecurity.

Objective for Week 3 (of 8)
More Money, More Problems. How Corporations and Cybercriminals are Attracted by One Thing: Data (and lots of it)

Claudiu’s Observation: Today’s focus is on the aggregation of information creating a bull’s eye around systems and organizations that collect vast amounts of data. Here are six current stories that prove the point: intangible assets can be converted into tangible value, for better or for worse.

MOVEit Breach Aftermath: A $65 Billion Wake-up Call | Claudiu Popa | Cybersafety Expert
Just a year after the World Economic Forum’s warning, the MOVEit breach unfolded, exposing vulnerabilities in cloud security. With over 2600 companies affected and losses exceeding $65 billion, this underscores the urgency for stringent vendor risk management and transparency standards in the cloud industry.
Claudiu PopaClaudiu Popa
Theft of Vancouver rape crisis centre server containing sensitive data raises privacy concerns | CBC News
Cybersecurity experts are warning of serious data privacy risks after a Vancouver rape crisis centre told clients and donors a computer server containing their sensitive personal information and banking details was stolen from its office last month.
CBCYasmine Ghania
Vast botnet ensnares Android TVs for evil bidding
8-year-old op responsible for DDoS attacks and commandeering broadcasts to push war material
The RegisterConnor Jones
Canada Will Use Letter Grades to Assess Companies’ Cyber Resilience
The Canadian government is joining forces with the cybersecurity ratings firm SecurityScorecard Inc. to bolster defenses for that country’s critical infrastructure.
BloombergAndrew Martin
The Sad Truth of the FTC’s ‘Historic’ Privacy Win
The FTC forced a data broker to stop selling “sensitive location data.” But most companies can avoid such scrutiny by doing the bare minimum, exposing the lack of protections Americans truly have.
WIREDCondé Nast
23andMe Blames Users for Recent Data Breach as It’s Hit With Dozens of Lawsuits
Plus: Russia hacks surveillance cameras as new details emerge of its attack on a Ukrainian telecom, a Google contractor pays for videos of kids to train AI, and more.
WIREDCondé Nast

Case in point, this week’s revelation that a 12 TERABYTE trove of personal data has been found to include some 26 BILLION personal records in what has been termed the Mother of All Breaches (#MOAB: https://techmonitor.ai/technology/cybersecurity/mother-of-all-breaches-data). In this case an unnamed individual simply helped themselves to all the data of previous leaks, clumsily piling it all up in one place where it can represent a tripping hazard for entrepreneurial opportunists and curious onlookers.

When interviewing certified professionals with relevant expertise, always ask:

1. What are the real harms in each case?
2. How big can the impact get, beyond this anecdotal scenario?
3. How can the risk be mitigated?

For professional analysis and media soundbites by a certified security and privacy expert with 35 years of experience, click here to request an interview with Claudiu Popa, author of the Canadian Cyberfraud Handbook, CEO of Datarisk Canada, President of Managed Privacy Canada and co-founder of the KnowledgeFlow Cybersafety Foundation, Canada's only non-profit dedicated to bringing digital literacy to vulnerable sector audiences via accredited data protection professionals.

Why Subscribe?

This weekly newsletter is the product of manually curated news presented with the expert commentary of Claudiu Popa. As a weekly publication intended for media and information professionals, the objective is simply to outline common threads flowing through current news stories and identify opportunities to ask the questions that matter. 

Whether you are a professional journalist or a passionate subscriber, this is your opportunity to gain actionable insights into the actual harms and the questions that matter about the real impact of cybersecurity.

Know a media professional? Offer them the Media Cybersecurity Briefing? It’s completely free (for now).