A mid-year update for Cybersecurity – 4 trends to watch Chuck Brooks

https://cybersecurity.att.com/blogs/security-essentials/a-mid-year-update-for-cybers

It is nearing the mid-year point of 2021, and already it can be characterized as” the year of the breach.” Many companies and institutions saw their security perimeters pierced by hackers including the mega-breaches of Solar Winds and the Colonial Pipeline.  The scale of penetration and exfiltration of data by hackers and the implications are emblematic of the urgency for stronger cybersecurity.  Although there are a variety of trends emerging in the first six months, below are four that stand out as barometers of what lies ahead.  

1. Ransomware attacks are taking center stage as Cyber-threats

There is ample evidence that ransomware has become a preferred method of cyber-attack choice by hackers in 2021. As of May 2021, there has been a 102% surge in ransomware attacks compared to the beginning of 2020, according to a report from Check Point Research.

Hackers have found ransomware ideal for exploiting the COVID-19 expanded digital landscape. The transformation of so many companies operating is a digital mode has created many more targets for extortion. One office with 4,000 employees has become 4,000 offices. In addition to an expanding attack surface, hackers are more active than before because they can get paid easier for their extortion via cryptocurrencies that are more difficult for law enforcement to trace. Criminal hacker groups are becoming more sophisticated in their phishing exploits by using machine learning tools. They are also more coordinated among each other sharing on the dark web and dark web forums.

In 2020, according to the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, ransomware gangs attached more than 100 federal, state, and municipal agencies, upwards of 500 health care centers, 1,680 educational institutions and untold thousands of businesses. As a result of the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack and others, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have prioritized investigating and prosecuting hackers who deploy ransomware.

The impact for the rest of 2021 will be more ransomware attacks against institutions and corporations who are less cyber secure, especially to targets that cannot afford to have operations impeded such as health care, state & local governments, educational institutions, and small and medium sized businesses.

See: The New Ransomware Threat: Triple Extortion – Check Point Software

Why Ransomware is So Dangerous and Difficult to Prevent | Manufacturing.net

2. Cyber-attacks are a real threat to commerce and economic prosperity

So far this year, cyber-attacks have grown in number and sophistication, repeating a trend of the last several years. The recent cycle of major industry and governmental cyber breaches is emblematic of growing risk. The attacks are also becoming more lethal and costly to industry. A new NIST report was released on the economic impact to the U.S. economy by breaches, and it is alarming. The report suggests that the U.S. Loses hundreds of billions to cybercrime, possibly as much as 1 % to 4 % of GDP annually. The beach stats are part of a bigger global trend. The firm Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global cybercrime damages will reach $6 trillion annually by this end of this year. The firm’s damage cost estimation is based on historical cybercrime figures including recent year-over-year growth, a dramatic increase in hostile nation-state sponsored and organized crime gang hacking activities, and a cyberattack surface.

In both the public and private sectors, there is a growing understanding of the seriousness and sophistication of the threats.  The list of adversarial actors is a large one that include states, organized crime, terrorists, and loosely affiliated hackers. To protect economic prosperity, there has been a movement for more threat information sharing and technical coordination between industry and government to filed tools and procedures that can better protect the crown jewels of critical infrastructure.

See:  Evidence suggests that the U.S. Loses Hundreds of Billions to Cybercrime, Possibly as much as 1 % to 4 % of GDP Annually | NIST

Global Cybercrime Damages Predicted to Reach $6 Trillion Annually By 2021 (cybersecurityventures.com)

3. Emerging technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence are impacting the digital ecosystem

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

We are grateful to Michael Ordman for the weekly catalog of Israel’s contributions which fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy (I created you, and appointed you A covenant people, a light of nations Isaiah 42:5-8)— by bringing light and hope for a better, healthier, more efficient and productive life for millions. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

UK trials for Israeli cancer treatment test.  The UK National Health Service (NHS) is to trial the blood test from Israel’s OncoHost (see here previously) that predicts how well cancer patients will respond to immunotherapy treatment. Trials will focus on patients with advanced melanoma or non-small cell lung cancer.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-oncohost-uks-nhs-to-study-cancer-patient-responses-to-immunotherapies/

Israeli vaccinations good till 2022. Israelis can now download new coronavirus vaccination or recovery certificates valid until the end of the year. Despite an uptick in new cases, and a return to wearing masks indoors, the Pfizer vaccine continues to show some 90% protection against even the Delta variant.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-issue-new-proof-of-vaccine-recovery-documents-valid-until-end-of-2021/

Contact-free patient monitoring. Israel’s Clair Labs is developing 24×7 contactless patient monitoring technology. Its biomarker sensors only need partial line of sight to the blood vessels on the patients’ facial skin to measure physiological markers, e.g., heartrate, respiration, airflow, body temperature and oxygen saturation.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/clair-labs-raises-9-million-to-monitor-patients-remotely-by-reading-skin/

https://clairlabs.com/

Ariel University dedicates its Medical School. The Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School of Medicine at Israel’s Ariel University has now been officially dedicated. 40 graduating students received doctoral degrees during the event and President Reuven Rivlin and Dr. Miriam Adelson were awarded honorary doctorates.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/miriam-adelson-rivlin-get-honorary-doctorates-at-ariel-university-med-school-opening/  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308592

Saving a life on the way to son’s graduation. Just as United Hatzalah volunteer medic Haim set off for his son’s 8th-grade graduation ceremony, he was called to save the life of an unconscious 72-year-old man. CPR and several defibrillator shocks revived the pulseless man, allowing Haim to continue to his son’s graduation.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308584

From Plato to Black Lives Matter by Rafe Champion

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/06/from-plato-to-black-lives-matter-rafe-champion/

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous—from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.    —Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

The equal opportunity movement of modern times is valuable, but the shift from equal opportunity to affirmative action is practically irresistible for people who are impatient to better the lot of their fellows. The shift may appear to be modest, but it has converted the equal opportunity and anti-racist movement into a vehicle of racism, intolerance, division and destruction.

I suggest that some aspects of Plato’s thought have poisoned the well of Western thought, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement can be seen as one of the consequences. How do we get from the works of the greatest philosopher of all time, the Divine Philosopher, to a movement that has triggered a deadly rampage of looting and arson with almost overwhelming approval among progressive left-wing people around the world?

This essay appears in June’s Quadrant.
Subscribers read it weeks ago

Western philosophy has been described as footnotes to Plato, and among the footnotes is The Open Society and Its Enemies, with Karl Popper’s critique of Plato’s later works, especially Republic and Laws. Popper found at last four elements of totalitarian thought in Plato. First is “racialism”, or “race thinking” as Jacques Barzun called it. Second is the concept of collective justice that Plato proposed to replace individual justice. Third is revolutionary canvas-cleaning to sweep away everything old and start again. Fourth is fake news, which Plato dignified with the title of noble lies.

Noble lies

Starting with the last of the four, a noble lie can be defined as a myth or untruth knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. 

What is the empirical basis for BLM, the evidence that the deaths of blacks at the hands of the police are symptoms of racism?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Calls for Release of January 6 Surveillance Footage By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/25/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-for-release-of-january-6-surveillance-footage/

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sent a letter to top government officials seeking answers about the January 6 investigation and conditions in a D.C. jail specifically used to house Capitol defendants. Greene requests the release of at least 14,000 hours of surveillance footage captured by USCP security system on January 6 as well as the identity of the officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed female veteran Trump supporter. “It is abundantly clear that there is a two-track justice system in the United States,” Greene wrote. Her letter can be found below:  

Derek Chauvin, Scapegoat The ritual the convicted Minneapolis police officer was subjected to was less a legal trial than a sort of pagan sacrifice. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/26/derek-chauvin-scapegoat/

EXCERPT

Back in March, I wrote wondering whether Chauvin could get a fair trial in Hennepin County. I didn’t think so and laid out the reasons. Chauvin’s conviction a month later on all charges—unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter—strengthened my skepticism. Chauvin, a nearly 20-year police veteran who was cited for bravery multiple times (he also racked up at least 17 civilian complaints), may have used excessive force trying to subdue Floyd, who had serious cardiac problems, was high on fentanyl and other substances, and was probably in a state of excited delirium while he was resisting arrest. But was Chauvin guilty of second- or third-degree murder? 

As I said at the time, it didn’t matter. George Floyd’s death was the catalyst that lit a holocaust. All across America, cities were burning. Derek Chauvin was the victim offered up to the gods in expiation. The ritual he was subjected to was less a legal trial than a sort of pagan sacrifice. 

The expected penalty for the charges Chauvin was convicted of is 11-12 years. Peter Cahill, the judge in the case, said that “prosecutors had proven there were aggravating factors in the case that called for a tougher sentence.” What were those “aggravating factors”? You or I might think the explosive situation in Minneapolis and other “progressive” redoubts was part of the story. Judge Cahill cited Chauvin’s callousness and disregard for Floyd. Similarly, after sentencing Chauvin, Judge Cahill insisted that his harsh sentence was “not based on public opinion. I am not basing it on any attempt to send any messages. The job of a trial judge is to apply the law to specific facts.” Indeed it is. How did Judge Cahill do? 

One friend, a lawyer who is knowledgeable about the case, told me that while he thought the prosecution mounted a strong case, it was also a battle between David and Goliath and David lost. Chauvin and his one attorney were totally outgunned by the prosecution. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. 

Another friend touched on what seems to me to be an essential point. Yes, the sentence was grotesquely disproportionate, he said, but remember: Chauvin, although charged only in the Floyd death, is also being sentenced “for all the ones who got away”: Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police officers involved in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Officer Daniel Pantaleo who was implicated in the death of Eric Garner in New York, etc. In every case, the media attack on the police was ferocious. But also in every case juries or other authorities found that the deaths were justifiable homicides.

Time to finally have that national conversation on race? By Richard Jack Rail

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/time_to_finally_have_that_national_conversation_on_race.html

Not all that long ago, then–attorney general Eric Holder said white people were too cowardly to have a national discussion about race.  Many white dudes spoke up to indicate our willingness to participate in such a discussion, but Eric must have been joking, because he never made any serious effort to get it going.

Since then, we’ve seen any number of indications that black people want such a discussion.  The thing is that we know in advance how it will go: they will say we’re white racist moh-fohs, that it’s hopeless because white racism is stitched into the very fabric of space-time, no justice no peace, white priv, etc.

Now black basketball sports talker Jalen Rose says roundballer Kevin Love is a token white selection to the Olympic squad.  Nobody’s going to disagree with Jalen out loud for fear of being called racist (even if he’s right, which he is), but what about when a less qualified black person gets a job ahead of a better qualified white person, or when better qualified Asians are turned away from Harvard/Stanford/Yale in favor of unqualified or less qualified blacks?

It’s called affirmative action, and if it’s wrong applied to basketball, then it’s wrong everywhere else.  Can we now start talking about token blacks?

Perhaps something useful could come of this.  We could use this topic to start that long overdue national discussion about race.  But a few stipulations would have to apply: no epithets, no invented facts, no riots, no attempts to shame whites, no stomping out with hurt feelings.  We can revile the abomination of Jim Crow so long as we also revile his relative, the abominable Jon Crow, AKA political correctness.

New York Democrats realize their politics don’t appeal to minorities By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/new_york_democrats_realize_their_politics_dont_appeal_to_minorities.html

New York Democrats trying to figure out why minorities are rejecting all those marvelous progressive policies that White leftists are imposing upon them. Shocked by Eric Adams’s successful race to be the Republican candidate for mayor, the New York Times’s Lisa Lerer examined the fact that progressives – that is, the hard leftists among the Democrats – aren’t winning over minorities.

Lerer’s analysis begins with Adams explicitly denouncing the policies that leftists from DeBlasio to AOC are promoting:

In a contest that centered on crime and public safety, Eric Adams, who emerged as the leading Democrat, focused much of his message on denouncing progressive slogans and policies that he said threatened the lives of “Black and brown babies” and were being pushed by “a lot of young, white, affluent people.” A retired police captain and Brooklyn’s borough president, he rejected calls to defund the Police Department and pledged to expand its reach in the city.

Black and brown voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx flocked to his candidacy, awarding Mr. Adams with sizable leading margins in neighborhoods from Eastchester to East New York. 

Adams’s success is not anomalous, writes Lerer. Instead, it points to

a disconnect between progressive activists and the rank-and-file Black and Latino voters who they [i.e., progressive activists] say have the most to gain from their agenda. As liberal activists orient their policies to combat white supremacy and call for racial justice, progressives are finding that many voters of color seem to think about the issues quite a bit differently.

Fauci resisted Trump directive to cancel virus research grant linked to Wuhan lab, new book says Excerpts from the book, “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” are being released.By Nicholas Sherman

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/fauci-allegedly-resisted-trump-directive-cancel-virus-research-grant

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States’ top infections disease expert, resisted a directive from President Trump to cancel a research grant for a non-profit that was linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a new book detailing the Trump administration’s handling of COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump issued a directive to Fauci and the National Institutes of Health in April 2020 to cut funding for a study examining how coronaviruses jump from infected bats to humans after it was reportedly linked to the lab in Wuhan, suspected of having leaked the virus.

The exchange between Fauci and the White House is detailed in an upcoming book by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta called “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” according to Fox News.

The study’s sponsor, EcoHealth Alliance, was then told to end the remaining $369,819 balance of its 2020 grant.

According to the book, on April 2020, Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins received notice that Trump wanted to cancel the grant. Fauci and Collins resisted, telling the White House they “were not sure the NIH actually had the authority to terminate a peer-reviewed grant in the middle of a budget cycle.” 

The American Left’s Obsession with Government-Run Health Care Defies Reality

https://www.newsmax.com/sallypipes/american-progressivism-united-kingdom/2021/06/23/id/1026186/

Fresh off their successful defense of Obamacare before the U.S. Supreme Court, Democrats are looking to expand government control over the country’s healthcare system.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have requested information on how to create a new public health insurance option. Senate Democrats led by Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., want to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60 as part of a $6 trillion budget reconciliation package. And Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is looking to levy price controls on prescription drugs.

They’d be wise to take stock of the latest data chronicling the performance of the government-dominated healthcare systems in the United Kingdom and Canada. For years, Britons and Canadians have struggled to gain timely access to high-quality care. In the wake of the pandemic, things have only gotten worse.

More than 5.1 million English patients were waiting for hospital care in April of this year, according to the National Health Service. That’s nearly one in every ten residents of England. And it’s the highest total since the NHS began keeping track in August 2007.

In many cases, these delays stretch on for months, or even years. More than 385,000 NHS patients have waited more than a year for care. Over 2,700 have been waiting for more than two years.

In Northern Ireland, the situation is worse, with some patients waiting more than seven years for specialty care.

And the waits are likely to grow. This month, the United Kingdom’s Health Secretary estimated that 12 million people were in need of elective surgery. There’s quite a lot of ground to make up. Last year, there were 1.6 million fewer operations in England and Wales than would’ve been expected in a normal year.

Fixing the wait crisis could cost 40 billion pounds, over four years, according to estimates from the British government.

Instead of holding itself to higher standards, the NHS seems poised to move the goalposts. Since 2004, the agency has set a goal of seeing 95% of emergency-room patients in four hours or fewer. Having frequently failed to meet that target, the NHS recently announced it would abandon the policy altogether.

Canadian patients face similar waits. In 2019, 4.8 million Canadians — well over 12% of the country — didn’t have a regular doctor. That same year, patients typically waited more than 20 weeks for specialist care following referral by a general practitioner, according to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank.

A Fascinating Interview with the Composer Whose Career Was Canceled By George Leef

Say the wrong thing in America today, and the forces of “progressivism” will have your head on a pike. That recently happened to Daniel Elder, a composer of choral music. He offered the opinion that arson was not a good tactic for social change and has paid dearly for that bit of heresy.

Quillette has an excellent interview with Elder.

His publisher drafted an apology for him, but Elder declined to sign on. In the interview, he observes, “Someone that arouses the attention of the online mob rarely escapes punishment by prostrating. Stand and face your executioner.”

Elder has stopped writing music and explains that he is hoping for changes in America that will restore the artistic environment. He says, “There are some principles vital to the healthy artistic environment that I have seen under increasing threat—polluted by intolerance and groupthink. This [is] why I’ve claimed I do not currently compose music: I’m waiting for [a] healthy environment of free thought to return, since it’s necessary for deeply communicative art. I’ve chosen to look at my loss as a temporary sacrifice in the interest of helping [bring about] change. And in that changed field, I may thrive again, more than ever. As more people take a stand, I have faith this change is coming … sooner or later.”

Let us hope so. In the meantime, I wonder if anything can be done to help this young man.