Last month, the State of Massachusetts made multiple announcements regarding Cybersecurity in the state. Firstly, they announced that more than $2.6 million has been allocated to fund the state's first two Cyber Security Operations Centers (SOC) and Cyber Ranges, which will be located at Bridgewater State University as well as Union Station in Springfield.

There was an extremely dangerous Ransomware incident last month in the state of Texas, as a cyberattack on EMS and ambulance company MedStar hindered their ability to respond to emergencies.

According to CBS News, the company detected "an active attack" that was targeted at their network.

According to multiple cybersecurity firms, Ransomware groups are shifting their methods and corrupting files, to make recovery from an attack even harder.

Symantec found that an affiliate of a known ransomware group had started to use a tool, Infostealer.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, revealed last month that they have identified and worked to take down "more than 400 malicious Android and iOS apps that target people across the Internet to steal their Facebook login information."

According to a blog post by their security team, these apps come in the form of "fun" apps, such as music players or cartoon editors, in order to trick unsuspecting users into downloading them.

A teenager has hacked both rideshare giant Uber and video game developer Rockstar Games back-to-back in what might be two of the highest-profile hacking incidents in 2022. On Thursday, September 15, employees at Uber found a message on their company's Slack channel, which allows instant text communication between teams.

A new report released this month by MIT Sloan in collaboration with Proofpoint surveyed 600 board members at organizations across 12 countries about their thoughts on cybersecurity preparedness.

While 75% of respondents said that cybersecurity risks and impacts are understood by their boards, the report states that "Just under two-thirds of board members believe that their organization is at risk of a material cyber attack.

On Friday, September 30, President Biden signed into Law the "SBIR and STTR Extension Act of 2022," which, according to a press release on the White House's website, "which authorizes the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), and six related pilot programs through Fiscal Year 2025."

“Passing this important bill gives our nation’s innovative small businesses and research institutions the certainty they need to continue developing the technology that will power the economy of tomorrow," said Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland).

It also codifies the requirement of agencies part of the program to assess "potential risk posed by program applicants' foreign ties.

A somewhat funny but definitely bad news story came out last month that involved a popular song from the late 1980s. Raymond Chen, who has worked at Microsoft for a quarter-century, keeps a blog on their website called "The Old New Thing."

In a post dated August 16th, 2022, Chen recalled a story a colleague had told him about how one of the world's largest computer manufacturers had found out by accident that by playing Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" music video, several of their laptops would crash.

The United States House of Representatives has been working hard on preparing its FY23 spending bills, with an estimated $15.6 billion being earmarked for cybersecurity over the coming year. This would also include $417 million more for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) than the amount President Biden requested.

Here at Direct iT, we've had a long-standing policy of not relying on password managers.

This has proven itself, most recently as password manager leader LastPass admitted that they were not only hacked, but their source code was stolen.

“We have determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information," LastPass said in a statement.