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A new report from Marsh reveals that the United States and Canada experienced a record number of cyber extortion events in 2023, with unprecedented demands. The report analyzed over 1,800 cyber claims submitted to Marsh and found that the annual percentage of clients reporting at least one cyber event has remained steady over the past five years. The healthcare, communications, retail/wholesale, financial institutions, and education sectors were the most affected, with healthcare and communications having the highest number of annual claims. Ransomware represented less than one-fifth of the reported claims but remained a top concern due to its increased frequency, sophistication, and potential severity. The report also highlights factors driving the increase in cyber events, such as increased cyberattacks' sophistication, supply chain vulnerabilities, and privacy claims. The median extortion payment increased from $335,000 in 2022 to $6.5 million in 2023, with the median demand increasing from $1.4 million to $20 million. The percentage of the median demand paid also increased from 24% in 2022 to 32% in 2023. The report emphasizes that privacy claims and system attacks leading to unauthorized access and potentially exposed data without an extortion component comprise a larger share of cyber events reported by Marsh clients than those with an extortion component. Another report found that ransomware remains the primary cyber concern for the third consecutive year, with 45% of respondents claiming to have been hit by a ransomware attack in the last 12 [Extracted from the article]

A new report from Marsh reveals that multiple companies in the U.S. and Canada experienced a record number of cyber extortion events in 2023, along with unprecedented demands. The report also highlights that an increasing number of companies refused to pay the demands. The top five industry sectors most affected by cyber extortion were healthcare, communications, retail/wholesale, financial institutions, and education. Ransomware represented less than one-fifth of the reported claims, but it remained a top concern due to its increased frequency, sophistication, and potential severity. The report suggests that factors such as increased cyberattacks, supply chain vulnerabilities, and privacy claims contributed to the rise in cyber extortion events. The median extortion payment increased significantly in 2023, reaching $6.5 million, while the percentage of the median demand paid also increased. The report concludes that ransomware attacks remain a primary concern for organizations, but other cyber events without an extortion component make up a larger share of reported incidents. [Extracted from the article]

Micro Logic's Projet Cirrus - Bringing Sovereign Cloud to Canada Stéphane Garneau, the president of Quebec-based Micro Logic, still sees the same forces driving private sector enterprises and public sector agencies to seek out sovereign cloud solutions now that he witnessed nearly a decade ago. Our dedicated Projet Cirrus team is comprised of certified and highly skilled experts who strive to push innovation forward and who are ideally qualified to address each customer's unique cloud journey", says Garneau. [Extracted from the article]

The aticle informs that papers uncovered in a joint investigation conducted by Vice News and Motherboard following a two-year fight by government lawyers of Canada reveals that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been decrypting BlackBerry Messenger messages since 2010. It is noted that BlackBerry has been accused for making unbreakable encryption for BBM.

The article discusses cybersecurity, Internet crime, and the claim that ransomware computer software attacks are impacting law firms in places such as British Columbia, and it mentions the emergence of the CrytoWall form of malware which hackers have used to infect over 600,000 victims around the world since February 2013. According to the article, ransomware attacks involve requests for monetary payments in exchange for the restoration of encrypted computer files.