The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) may not be the first agency that comes to mind with respect to cybersecurity, but the SEC has been in the headlines recently with respect to cyber fraud in particular. Earlier this month, the SEC promulgated a report urging companies to take preventive measures against cyber fraud.

On July 23 and 25, 2018, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held public briefings about an attempt by a state-sponsored Russian hacking group to target control systems for U.S. electrical grids and power plants. DHS’ webinar explained that the hackers obtained access to vendors providing computer services to electric utilities companies. This initial access enabled the hackers to gain entry to power company control systems through a complex series of security compromises lasting quite some time.

Slightly over one year ago, several major distributed denial-of-service (“DDoS”) attacks took place, including a major event affecting the domain name service provider Dyn, which caused outages and slowness for a number of popular sites, including Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Twitter.

Now, a new Internet of Things (IoT) botnet, called IoT Reaper, or IoTroop, has been discovered by researchers and could present a threat that could dwarf the 2016 attacks and create a major disruption to internet activity around the world.

In a bid to keep pace with advancements in the technological landscape, the Singapore Government has in recent months embarked on public consultations on its draft Cybersecurity Bill (the Cyber Bill) and its proposed amendments to Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) to update the country’s data protection regime. These changes will have a significant impact on how companies manage personal data and secure their information systems.

This article seeks to summarise the proposed changes to the Singapore cybersecurity and data protection regulatory framework and provide some brief thoughts on how this may impact organisations operating in Singapore.

A new strain of malware began infecting computer systems across the globe on Tuesday.  Similar to the WannaCry ransomware that struck last month, the malware used in this week’s attack spreads quickly across multiple computers on a network, encrypting files and displaying a ransom note that requests $300 worth of bitcoin for a decryption key.

Reports of infection began in Ukraine, where computer systems belonging to government ministries, financial institutions, transportation systems, and major energy companies began malfunctioning.  The attack was first believed to be caused by a variant of the “Petya” strain of ransomware, however recent reports from security experts indicate that the malware used during this week’s attack was altered so that, even with a decryption key, encrypted files cannot be recovered.  This fact has lead several sources to dub the malware “ExPetr” and speculate that the attacker’s motivations were destructive instead of financial.

In this post, we summarize key facts regarding the WannaCry ransomware attack, provide an abbreviated list of known affected companies, and offer an overview of the legal issues and the response to the attack. This post is an update to our prior coverage of WannaCry.

A large-scale ransomware attack began impacting companies and hospitals across the United States, Europe, and Asia early Friday morning.  According to reports, companies in more than 70 countries have reported incidents as of Friday afternoon.

The attacks are being