The specialists ramped up their warnings after jewellery chain Luk Fook Holdings said on Friday it was verifying claims a hacker accessed the records of 5 million customers and was seeking a ransom of more than HK$190,000 (US$24,310) in cryptocurrency.
The Hong Kong College of Technology also said it was hit by a “highly targeted and unusual cyberattack” in February which leaked personal information concerning about 8,100 students. A ransomware group was believed to have stolen 450GB of data and shared the information on the dark web earlier this week.
Cybercrime is the third largest economy globally, with geopolitical tensions, digital warfare has surfaced to areas we didn't expect. In year 2000, not too long ago, companies are begging American giants like Sun Microsystems, Cisco, IBM for speeding up their orders, routers with ACL is already considered advanced security feature. In 2001, Israeli market leader Checkpoint was heavily promoting through distrbutor, and still companies are skeptical about Software-based Firewall (with stateful inspection capability). Twenty three years later, technology alone isn't enough, and blaming I.T. isn't a solution anymore in government, large enterprises, or mid-size companies.