NTT’s Global Threat Intelligence Center June 2021 Monthly Threat Report

The NTT’s Global Threat Intelligence Center June 2021 Monthly Threat Report takes a look at the Colonial Pipeline event and ransomware. But, interestingly enough, the ransomware did not attack the OT infrastructure – the systems which actually controlled the flow of fuel, but targeted organizational systems. The attack led to Colonial Pipeline shutting down the pipeline in an abundance of caution, minimizing the chances the ransomware could spread to the more sensitive networks. The resulting outage resulted in fuel shortages across the East Coast of the US, even leading to physical altercations at the pump.

The report also provides a quick look at the education industry as an attack target. While education was the fifth most targeted industry in 2020 and the focus of 6% of all hostile activity, this was still millions of attacks. Education was forced to adapt rapidly to constraints placed on it in reaction to COVID-19. Attackers took advantage of these changes to continue attacks against education. Education is not always in a position to best meet their operational cybersecurity goals, so perhaps it is in the best interests of other organizations to assist with industry-specific cyber-threat information.

Finally, on 12 May 2021, US President Biden signed the ’Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.’ While this executive order (XO) has been under consideration for some time, President Biden signed it after gathering momentum from the recent attacks on national and international critical infrastructure. The XO is over 8,000 words, but the main goals are to help drive improvements in cybersecurity standards in the federal government, the software supply chain, detection and remediation capabilities, and sharing of information between the public and private sectors. NTT believes that extensive public/private partnerships will be important for the success of the XO.

The report was published on the Insights Page of the NTT Ltd. website.