Grooming is a method of establishing a connection with a person to perpetrate a crime against them. Grooming is becoming more common in fraud, both online as well as in interpersonal interactions. What’s more, scammers are getting more sophisticated in their techniques. There is a mistaken belief that scammers are forceful, arrogant, and therefore easy to spot, but many play a long game, carefully and patiently grooming the victim before asking for money. In some…

The journey for someone to the role of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) isn’t often straightforward. Take Sandy Dunn, for example. Per SailPoint, Sandy started as a paper delivery kid at 10 years old. She then worked her way through software sales, insurance, and even horses before becoming the CISO of a health insurance provider in Idaho. All these “entry-level” jobs share one thing in common. They gave Sandy the experience to fulfill a CISO’s…

INTRODUCTION For law enforcement, finding and dealing with Apple devices in the field can create confusion and headaches without first understanding some critical differences between Operating systems (HFS+, APFS, and Windows file systems). With digital forensic professionals seeing more Mac laptops and other Apple devices more often, we created this guide to identify a few challenges that law enforcement and digital investigators may encounter and provide solutions and best practices for tackling these obstacles both…

The first ever person to be convicted of cyber-stalking in the District of Nebraska has been sentenced to federal prison. Dennis Sryniawski, a 48-year-old resident of Bellevue, was charged with intent to extort and cyber-stalking his former girlfriend, Diane Parris, in an attempt to prevent her husband, Jeff Parris, from being elected to the Nebraska legislature.  A jury convicted Sryniawski on only the cyber-stalking charge in June 2021, after a three-day jury trial. Evidence presented at trial…

A new Guinness World Record in cybersecurity training has been set by a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) provider, a security awareness training platform, and a PR firm.  The first-of-its-kind record was for the most views of a virtual cybersecurity lesson in 24 hours, and it was achieved on October 14 through the joint efforts of OneLogin, KnowBe4, and Eskenzi PR. Security expert and global data protection officer at OneLogin, Niamh Muldoon, and Javvad Malik, lead security…

A team of law enforcement officials from South Carolina has seized first place in a nationwide cybersecurity contest. More than 200 teams from across the United States participated in the National Computer Forensics Institute’s (NCFI’s) Training and Cyber Games competition, which took place earlier this month. During the event, teams of NCFI-trained local law enforcement officials joined forces with Secret Service investigators to form integrated response units.  The units were tasked with solving a simulated cyber-attack…

A Few Small Practices Can Have a Large Impact By Mike Mosher, Director of Technology, Cinch I.T. If you own a small or medium-sized business, you are a target of the majority of cyber security attacks. It can happen to you, it does happen to your peers, and more than half of all SMBs that suffer a cybersecurity attack never recover. Attacks against SMBs almost never make the news; those stories are reserved for the…