Welcome reader to your CybersecurityHQ report.

Headlines

We began the last newsletter detailing how Microsoft executives recently told the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) they were attacked by Midnight Blizzard (connected to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service), and now Hewlett Packard is saying the same in a filing with the SEC. As with the Microsoft incident, this attack was detected on January 12. The hackers first gained access in May 2023.

If it is an attack by an SVR-backed group, it would reflect the similar attack at SolarWinds in 2020 that resulted in access customers in nine federal agencies. Hewlett Packard is similarly situated as an enormous cloud service provider. On January 9, they announced plans to acquire Juniper Networks for $14 billion, further expanding their footprint.

While Microsoft might have recently reported an attack, that hasn’t done much to slow its growth — the company’s stock market value has now passed $3 trillion, making it the second most valuable company in the world behind Apple. The increasing value is largely seen as a consequence of the company’s aggressive investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

The company now integrates OpenAI technology in its legendary suite of productivity programs and with its search engine Bing, which has continued to lag behind Google.

In a sign of the times, the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has announced plans to create a college devoted to the topics of AI, cybersecurity, computing, and data science. The move comes in response to the rapidly growing interest in these topics among students. Currently, the university has 6,000 students enrolled in programs in these fields, a 31% leap since 2019.

UTSA President Taylor Eighmy stated, “The convergence of AI, data science, computing, and cybersecurity signifies a very forward-looking endeavor as we embrace the fifth industrial revolution, now especially propelled by AI advancements… These disciplines will remain intertwined for the foreseeable future.”

Interesting Read

Cyber insecurity, misinformation, and disinformation are among the top risks facing the world in the next two years, according to the World Economic Forum. In this interview with ComputerWeekly, Steven Sim Kok Leong, a member of ISACA and chair of the OT-ISAC Executive Committee, shares his insights on how regulators, enterprises, and technology providers can work together to bridge the cyber security divide in 2024.

 He discusses the impact of regulatory change, the evolving role of the CISO, and the advances in innovative cyber tech. Read more here.

For the latest openings in cybersecurity careers, check CybersecurityHQ.

Stay Safe, Stay Secure.

The CybersecurityHQ Team