Bringing to light an international hacking empire
More often than not, reality overcomes fiction. Why bother with whodunnit novels books when you can read newly-unsealed court documents?
An estimated $1.5 million in profits. Over 300 target companies across 44 countries. Under the moniker “Fxmsp,” a hacker made global headlines last year for stealing and selling source code and customer access to MacAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro.
More importantly, the hacker built backdoors into enterprise networks and then made them invisible to the system. He then sold these through Russian hacking groups for up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a piece.
Meet Andrey Turchin, a 37-year-old man from Kazakhstan whose name has just been made public by a U.S. court. He established a full-blown business almost overnight, even employing another reputed hacker as his sales manager.
Read the full story before Hollywood makes a movie out of it.
More on cybersecurity
Another week goes by, leaving us with new record-breaking cyber incident metrics.
British security provider Sophos published a comprehensive cloud security study, revealing that 70% of companies hosting data or workloads in the public cloud experienced a breach in the past year.
Businesses in the multi-cloud received almost twice as many attacks compared to those using a single cloud provider, highlighting why companies should be more worried about their cloud data.
On another note, be advised that there is a new kid on the block. A novel strain of ransomware called Conti can use 32 simultaneous CPU threads to encrypt your data.
The most in-demand IT pros
Remote work is here to stay, and that is re-shaping the IT talent needs of companies looking to remain competitive in this new reality.
Unsurprisingly, being knowledgeable in collaboration tools like Zoom or Teams comes in handy. So does expertise in cloud-based business suites like Microsoft 365 and G Suite.
Networking and infrastructure skills are also in high demand, as companies need to build stronger ecosystems that are able to withstand the surge in remote work and cyber attacks.
But general business acumen takes the spotlight in the post-COVID world. Here are the most sought-after business skills of the moment.
News from Microsoft
We got some updates from the Redmond-based company this week.
The wave 2 release plans for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform are now available. Be sure to review all the upcoming changes and additions ahead of the October roll-out. Early access begins on August 3rd.
Also — Microsoft Teams will now present your team in a fake auditorium during video calls. It certainly looks strange, but apparently our brains process it better than the rectangular grid with everyone’s face on it.
