On December 20, 2021, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its draft interagency report 8403 on “Blockchain for Access Control Systems”.  As the report’s abstract states:

“Protecting system resources against unauthorized access is the primary objective of an access control system. As information systems rapidly evolve, the need for advanced access control

On November 18, 2021, the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) approved a new final rule regarding reporting of cyber incidents for U.S. banks and service providers.

Under the new rule, a banking organization must notify its primary federal regulator of “any significant computer

A new bill introduced by the Senate (S. 2666), the “Sanction and Stop Ransomware Act of 2021”, would require a strict 24-hour limit for reporting ransomware payments for businesses with more than 50 employees. The bipartisan bill, put forward by leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, also focuses on critical infrastructure,

Background

On August 30, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sanctioned eight firms in three actions for cybersecurity failures in their policies and procedures that exposed the personal information of thousands of customers at each firm. These firms included: Cetera Advisor Networks LLC, Cetera Investment Services LLC, Cetera Financial Specialists LLC, Cetera Advisors LLC,

On May 12, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order to strengthen U.S. cybersecurity defenses. The order comes in the wake of the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline and numerous other cybersecurity attacks against the U.S. government and private companies over the past few years. The order proposes a wide array of changes to bolster

On October 22, 2020, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) published NIST Technical Note (TN) 2111, “An Empirical Study on Flow-based Botnet Attacks Prediction”. The note, authored by Mitsuhiro Hatada and Matthew Scholl of NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory, presents a method to predict botnet attacks, such as mass spam email and distributed denial-of-service

The National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a joint alert warning that, over recent months, hackers have been attempting to target Critical Infrastructure (CI) by exploiting Internet-accessible Operational Technology (OT) assets. The alert notes recently observed tactics from the hackers, including spear phishing and

On July 21, 2020, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) filed charges against First American Title Insurance Company (First American) for breach of state cybersecurity regulations. Specifically, NYDFS alleges that First American exposed tens of millions of documents containing consumers’ sensitive personal information, including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax

Last Friday, May 1, the White House signed an executive order prohibiting Federal Agencies and U.S. persons from acquiring, importing, transferring, or installing any bulk power system (“BPS”) equipment in which:

  • the transaction involves bulk-power system electric equipment designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied, by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or

Note:  This post was originally posted in our Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor.

Gregory C. Cook & Brandon N. Robinson

The story is becoming all too common.  A merchant (or consumer) is convinced to wire money to a fraudulent account because of an incorrect belief that they are wiring the money to the real party.