Ransomware is Pressuring Public Services

 

The FBI and CISA has indicated that ransomware attacks are becoming a safety risk to public services as they are attractive targets to cybercriminals due to their critical nature. Public services such as utility companies, emergency services, safety operations, healthcare and the education sector are being increasingly targeted and sensitive personal data is being stolen which is putting local residents at risk of fraud.

Local governments will see no decline in these attacks as the deployment of malware continues to evolve. The FBI explained a ransomware attack in January of this year forced a US county to take down their computer systems and enact an emergency response through their backup procedures. The county jail was targeted which meant surveillance cameras were deactivated along with the jail’s data collection capabilities, automated doors, and internet access. This obviously caused alarm amongst employees and resulted in significant safety concerns for the facility.

There are plenty of other examples too, including an attack in September 2021 that closed a county courthouse and the attackers subsequently leaked personal details of employees and residents online after the ransom wasn’t paid. And in May 2021, several local governments were infected with a ‘PayOrGrief’ ransomware attack that led to servers and online services becoming inaccessible.

According to the report, only academia and higher education facilities were attacked more frequently than local government services in 2021. The FBI has restated several times that victims should not pay any ransom demands because it may encourage further attacks. However, some targets decide to pay so they are able to quickly restore their services.

After paying the ransom though, restoring a network can be a complicated and long task to complete, and there is no certainty that the decryption key provided by the hackers will work or that they won’t return later. The FBI encourages all victims to report any ransomware incident to help prevent future attacks.

They have also recommended numerous cybersecurity measures [PDF] that businesses can enact to help prevent becoming a victim, including keeping software and operating systems up to date with the latest security patches, and requiring strong passwords for online accounts. This makes it harder for criminals to exploit network and system vulnerabilities and guess user passwords.

In addition, organisations should keep offline backups of their data that are regularly tested and updated so networks can be restored without decryption keys. Employees should require the use of multi-factor authentication for their webmail, accounts, and VPNs to add an additional layer of protection against such attacks.

Wi-Fi 6

 

While the IEEE 802.11 standard defines the Wi-Fi standard, the Wi-Fi Alliance is an industry group that also helps to define these technologies. This group is responsible for the ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED’ program which ensures interoperability between devices regardless of their vendor. The internet of things (IoT) is becoming more prevalent in our everyday lives and within industrial settings, and this is driving the demand for more secure, efficient, and reliable connectivity methods. As customers ask for higher capacity and lower latency Wi-Fi, the community is pushing to adopt new capabilities and features to support these requests.

The next generation is called Wi-Fi 6, based on the 802.11ax standard, and it provides a variety of features such as ‘orthogonal frequency division multiple access’ (OFDMA) which improves performance in dense environments so devices can divide the spectrum allowing for a more consistent and deterministic network experience. For example, smaller packets can still be transmitted while larger packets for video streaming are unaffected.

‘Target wake time’ (TWT) is another feature of Wi-Fi 6 that allows connected devices to determine how frequently they should awake and transceive data. Basically, access points can now increase a device’s sleep time thus extending battery life and lowering consumption. This is imperative for smart and IoT devices which are required 24 hours a day, but don’t need to always be on.

Used in conjunction with the Wi-Fi Alliance’s ‘HaLow’, IoT devices remain power-efficient. HaLow provides long-distance, speed, low-power, penetration, and security features that other technologies do not. This technology supports higher throughput at ranges up to a kilometre while consuming a low amount of power and maintaining performance.

The alliance has also expanded their ‘CERTIFIED’ program to help optimise networks that are experiencing a rapid growth in the number and type of devices connecting to personal and corporate networks. For example, 1 certification is provided for those devices that improve mobility when roaming between networks. Other optimisations focus on QoS management or helping providers and network managers manage complex networks with more secure, efficient, and smart Wi-Fi networks.

In the most demanding wireless network environments, Wi-Fi 6 provides users the coverage, capacity, efficiency, and performance that is required as more devices are connected to our networks. The features of this next generation technology will only continue to grow in demand as out homes and offices become more connected through smart devices.

Leveraging Satellite Communications in Business

 

During last week’s Satellite 2022 conference, panellists discussed the possibilities for AI-powered satellite connectivity such as accelerating digital transformation, edge computing, and the enterprise IoT market. Satellite communications are intersecting with cloud services and other technologies which increase the data analytics and infrastructure possibilities in the future. For example, low orbit micro-satellites could provide a cost-efficient way to move data across the globe, and AWS are working with satellite developers to provide ground stations to downlink its growing data.

Through artificial intelligence and dynamic bandwidth allocation, satellite services may become more rapidly utilised by enterprises to increase their customer reach and accelerate their digital transformation. Nokia has started to provide consulting services in this sector and argues there are 3 pillars that organisations should focus on to enable this transformation. The first is obviously having a high-performance network layer via satellite, wireless, or wireline. The other 2 include analytics with AI and ML to analyse the factors that matter, and using digital devices to properly collect the data in the first place.

In order to digitise for transformation, everything must be digitised via an IoT sensing layer because collecting this data is useless if intelligence isn’t applied to it. In other applications, enterprises can connect to remote offices and locations using satellite technology. This is especially true for the mining, oil, and gas industries where locations may be quite disparate. Growth in IoT could significantly impact those industries wishing to harness the power of satellite communications by providing control and a visualisation of the enterprise’s operations.

The service should become more user-friendly as more data flows through these satellite networks, and the agriculture and healthcare sectors have also been seen as areas where this transformation could be highly beneficial. The use of AI will be critical to the success of IoT and thus the market for satellite communications moving forward.