COVID is exposing network vulnerabilities

July 6, 2020

With so many people working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercriminals are using “brute force” attacks to break the passwords of employees signing into their company networks remotely, according to ESET, a cybersecurity and antivirus protection firm.

Cybercriminal groups are targeting ubiquitously-used remote login services as a way to circumvent the usual protections to company systems. The criminals then often hold companies’ networks hostage via ransomware. Despite the increasing importance of remote access services, organizations often neglect to protect their settings.

Employees use easy-to-guess passwords, often with no additional layers of authentication or protection. Cybercriminals typically brute-force their way into a poorly secured network, elevate their rights to admin level, disable or uninstall security solutions, and then run ransomware to encrypt crucial company data.

Among ESET’s own users, the most commonly blocked IP addresses associated with these types of attempted intrusions came from the United States, China, Russia, France, and Germany. Meanwhile, most victims of these types of attempted intrusions possess IP addresses located in Russia, Germany, Japan, Brazil, and Hungary.

Looking for Private Company Financials?
Private company intel in a matter of seconds with our AI-powered search engine.

Start your search today

Internet Security Companies:

CrowdStrike was co-founded by George Kurtz (CEO), Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO), and Gregg Marston (CFO, retired) in 2011. In 2012, Shawn Henry, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official, was hired to lead sister company CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which focused on proactive and incident response services. In June 2013, the company launched its first product, CrowdStrike Falcon, which provided threat intelligence and attribution to nation-state actors that are conducting economic espionage and IP theft.

Gigamon is a privately-held network visibility and traffic monitoring technology vendor. Formerly public, it is now owned by Elliott Management. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Gigamon had 371 employees as of December 27, 2014, 743 employees as of April 2017, and nearly 1,000 as of June, 2020. The company's proprietary products can manipulate and route traffic to various application performance, network management, analysis, compliance and security tools.

Infoblox is a privately held IT automation and security company based in California's Silicon Valley. The company focuses on managing and identifying devices connected to networks—specifically for the Domain Name System (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, and IP address management (collectively, "DDI"). According to Gartner, by 2015 the Infoblox market share was 49.9 percent of the $533M enterprise DDI market. In June 2016, IDC, a market intelligence firm, named Infoblox as the market share leader in DNS, DHCP, and IP address management.

Funding & Deal Highlights:

Alabama Futures Fund (“AFF”) recently placed an investment in True Load Time, Inc. (“True Load Time” or “TLT”). Based in Greenville, South Carolina, TLT has created a web and mobile-based platform where truck drivers, dispatchers, freight brokers, and supply chain professionals can search for average facility loading and unloading times prior to booking. This data helps freight brokers, freight operators, and independent owner-operators gain critical insight into loading and unloading times, which is a major factor in correctly pricing a load, determining which loads to accept, and keeping drivers satisfied in a brokered transaction.

Competitive Wedge, the video interviewing solution that helps recruiters make authentic connections with candidates, announces details of its funding. The company completed the final tranche of its seed funding, bringing its total funding to $1M raised to date.

Curv raises a $23M Series A round and launches tX to accelerate institutional adoption of digital assets.

Spiketrap raises $3M for its AI platform that helps brands understand how they are engaging with consumers on social media. The San Francisco-based company processes text-based social data — like Twitter posts — to discern how consumers view a brand or a game in real-time.

Kitu Life Inc., the startup behind fast-growing beverage brand Super Coffee, raises $25M in a fundraising round that values it at more than $200M.

Bolt Biotherapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing its Immune-Stimulating Antibody Conjugate (ISAC) platform technology to harness the power of the innate immune system to treat cancer, announces the closing of an oversubscribed $93.5M Series C financing.

Fauna announces $27M in new funding to make adding a database a simple API call. The round, which is technically an extension of the company’s 2017 Series A, was led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from Addition, GV, CRV, Quest Ventures and a number of individual investors. The investment brings the total raised to $57M, according to the company.

The Mom Project raises $25M for its job site aimed at working mothers.

Owkin, a French company applying machine learning to medical research, secures $18M in funding from Mubadala Capital and BPI France, through the bank’s Large Venture fund. This Series A extension brings the startup’s total amount raised to $70M.

Peer-to-peer motorcycle marketplace startup Riders Share raises $2M for its Series A.

Intento brings in a $3M seed round to help companies procure and deploy a range of best-fit artificial intelligence solutions for content processing.

Since last week, PrivCo has added:
808 Profiles Updates | 113 M&A Deals | 144 Funding Activities

Sony Weighs Bid for Hong Kong-Listed Gaming Firm Leyou

Sony Corp. is weighing a bid for Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd., people familiar with the matter say, paving the way for an intensified bidding war for the Hong Kong-listed gaming firm.
[Read more].

Workhorse lands $70M to ramp up production of electric last-mile delivery vehicles

Workhorse Group Inc., a provider of electric vehicles for the last-mile delivery sector, secures $70M in financial backing and plans to ramp up production. [Read more].

Thanks for reading.
Be well and stay healthy!

Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here.