The hardware networking company Cisco has launched an innovation center in South-east Asia. The California-based company stated that the new facility will bring together industry players, government organizations, and startups to work on regional issues in cybersecurity and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Cisco also established a Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (CCX) in partnership with the Economic Development Board (EDB) to boost its Asia-Pacific threat intelligence research, response capabilities, and work towards improving national cybersecurity.

The two centers, which are located at Cisco’s new office in the Mapletree Business City, are designed to catalyze digital innovation with the focus areas of Singapore’s Digital Economy Framework for Action.

Speaking on the latest accomplishments Irving Tan, Cisco’s Senior Vice President and Chief of Operations for Southeast Asia stated, “At Cisco, we build the bridge between hope and possibility. This is only possible when innovative technology and imaginative people come together around a common purpose. Innovation no longer happens behind the closed doors of R&D labs but in open ecosystems. By fostering local and global partnerships, Cisco is leading innovation in cutting edge technology solutions that will create a better future for the region.”

In the past, Cisco had also partnered with the United Kingdom police forces to provide them cybersecurity training through the Cisco Networking Academy. The company stated that it’s going to train more than 120,000 police officers across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to help make the UK the safest cyberspace. The latest training partnership between the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Cisco’s Networking Academy mark the first anniversary of Cisco’s digital skills manifesto in the United Kingdom. The nationwide cybersecurity training will help the police officers develop their knowledge in emerging cybersecurity trends.

Also, Cisco joined hands with Apple, Aon, and Allianz to develop a new cyber risk management solution for businesses. The new solution is designed to help a wider range of organizations better manage and protect themselves from the cyber risk associated with ransomware and other malware-related threats, which are the most common threats faced by organizations today.

Over the weekend, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Army websites were attacked by hackers. According to the spokesperson Mohammad Faisal, the ministry received several complaints from various countries reporting that the websites were inaccessible from February 16, 2019. It’s believed that the attack was originated from India, Pakistan’s news site Dawn reported.

The cyber attack was the wake of the terrorist strike in Pulwama, Kashmir on February 14, 2019, that claimed the lives of 40 Indian CRPF personnel. The Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed the responsibility for the attack.

“The IT team is currently occupied in thwarting the hackers’ onslaught. The website is functioning without any issues in Pakistan. However, visitors to the website from Holland, Australia, Britain, and Saudi Arabia are facing difficulty opening it,” Faisal said in a statement.

Pakistan encountered a similar incident in November 2018, when hackers attacked almost all the banking websites in the country. Every person holding a bank account may have become vulnerable to cyber threats, as data from almost all the banks of the nation was stolen in a security breach. The incident was revealed by the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) cybercrime chief, Captain (retd) Mohammad Shoaib.  In an interview with Geo News, he said, “Almost all [Pakistani] banks’ data has been breached. According to the reports that we have, most of the banks have been affected.”

According to him, there are over 100 cases that the agency is currently been investigating. The agency has also arrested several gangs that have been involved in cybercrime and recovered the stolen money. One of the recent apprehended gang used to withdraw money from people’s accounts while masquerading themselves as military officials.

The revelation came while responding to a report from Group-IB, a global cyber security firm, which stated that hackers had released a huge trove of credit and debit cards of Pakistan citizens on the dark web forums.

Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating and social networking app/website has become the latest victim of a data breach after hackers exposed around 6 million users’ personal information. The San Francisco–based company stated that unknown intruders compromised the users’ information and exposed it on the dark web marketplace.

Coffee Meets Bagel notified all the affected users about the incident in an email. The exposed information included users’ names, location, gender, addresses, email addresses, and other personal information, the Independent reported.

“We recently discovered that some data from your Coffee Meets Bagel account may have been acquired by an unauthorized party. Once we became aware, we quickly took steps to determine the nature and scope of the problem. We have engaged forensic security experts to conduct a review of our systems and infrastructure,” the company said in an email statement.

Coffee Meets Bagel also stated that it’s going to enhance the security measures to better detect and prevent unauthorized access to its systems in the future.

Dating apps have been a prime target for hackers. Research by Kaspersky Lab, on analyzing several dating apps, revealed that the dating apps transmit unencrypted user data over insecure HTTP protocol risking user data exposure. According to researchers, the reason for the vulnerability was due to applications using third-party ready-to-go advertising Software Development Kits (SDKs), popular among advertising networks. Researchers while digging deeper found that most of the data were sent out unencrypted and over HTTP, making the data highly vulnerable while travelling through servers. Lack of encryption may mean that the data can be deciphered and intercepted by anyone.

The researchers suggested that these data can be modified and can be infused with malware endangering the user data. They also advised users to follow preventative measures like checking app permissions and using VPNs.

The United States-based military contracting giant Raytheon has received $406 million Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract award from the U.S. Army for ARC-231A radio systems. The contract, which will be performed over the next five years, includes upgrades, production, and support for up to 5,000 radios.

ARC-231A is a software-defined and can accommodate rapid upgrades without requiring the radio to be removed from its platform. The radios will be installed on a variety of Army platforms, including the UH-60 Black Hawk, UH-72 Lakota utility helicopter, and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Raytheon stated the latest version of the system gained NSA Type 1 certification and delivers secure, classified communications on the battlefield.

Raytheon is a technology developer specialized in defense, civil government, and cybersecurity solutions. The company provides advanced electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries.

“These radios are the backbone of rotary-wing communications,” said Barbara Borgonovi, vice president of Raytheon Integrated Communication Systems. “The ARC-231A enables U.S. forces to maintain the edge in secure communications, whether they’re flying in contested or congested environments.”

In December 2018, Raytheon had announced that it was going to form a joint venture with Saudi Arabian Oil Company Saudi Aramco to develop cybersecurity services in the Saudi region. According to the Memorandum of Understanding, the Saudi Aramco and Raytheon Saudi Arabia, a subsidiary of Raytheon Company, developed and provided advanced cybersecurity software and hardware.

They carried out research and development activities in the Saudi Arabia region. Saudi Aramco stated the latest venture would strengthen the cybersecurity capability of the company as well as its suppliers, customers, and affiliates. According to Raytheon, the agreement would continue to fuel its global growth in the areas of defense systems and platforms.

Email service provider VFEmail is the latest victim of a cyber-attack. The United States-based company in a recent statement admitted that unknown intruders wiped out the firm’s primary and backup data from every server in what has been dubbed as a catastrophic attack on the company.

Founded in 2001, VFEmail provides email services to enterprises and end users. Rick Romero, the founder of VFEmail, called the attack a catastrophic one. It’s believed that around 18 years’ worth of customer email data in the United States may be disappeared forever. The issue was discovered on February 11, 2019, after several users reported that they were not receiving messages. VFEmail stated that the mail services are up for the customers presently and they’re making efforts to recover the users’ data.

“We have suffered catastrophic destruction at the hands of a hacker. This person has destroyed all the data in the United States, both primary and backup systems. We are working to recover what data we can,” the company said in a statement.

“At this time, the attacker has formatted all the disks on every server,” VFEmail wrote in a Twitter post. “Every VM [virtual machine] is lost. Every file server is lost, every backup server is lost. Strangely, not all VMs shared the same authentication, but all were destroyed. This was more than a multi-password via ssh exploit, and there was no ransom. Just attack and destroy.”

Recently, a massive data breach left around 773 million email addresses and more than 21 million passwords unprotected online. According to the security researcher Troy Hunt, the person behind the breach notification service website Have I Been Pwned, a huge database that includes records from more than 2,000 hacked databases was exposed online.

The breached data, which Troy Hunt called Collection #1, include around 773 million (772,904,991) unique email addresses and 21 million (21,222,975) unique passwords. Sized around 87 GB, the breached records also included 1,160,253,228 unique combinations of breached email addresses and passwords. Hunt stated the data breach is made up of various individual data breaches from thousands of other sources.

500px, a Toronto-based online photo-sharing platform, recently revealed that it suffered a security breach that compromised around 14.8 million users’ personal information. In an official statement, 500px stated that an unauthorized intruder gained access to its systems on July 5, 2018. The breach was discovered by its security officials on February 8, 2019. 500px is a community for photographers that allows them to share their work globally.

500px concluded that the incident affected certain information provided by the users while filling out their profiles. The data included users’ first and last names, username, email address, password, birth date, addresses, gender details, and other sensitive information.

However, the company clarified that they found no evidence of any misuse of the compromised data. 500px notifying all the affected users via emails to reset their account credentials as a precautionary measure.

“On February 8, 2019, our engineering team became aware of a potential security issue affecting certain user profile data. We immediately launched a comprehensive review of our systems to understand the nature and scope of the issue. We engaged a third-party expert to assist us in our investigation and are coordinating with law enforcement authorities on this matter,” the company said in a statement.

“Regardless of whether or not you were directly affected, given the nature of the personal data involved, we are alerting you to this matter, so you can take steps to help protect yourself against the risk of phishing, spam, and misuse of your information as a result of this issue. We recommend you change your password on any other website or app on which you use a password that is the same as or similar to your password for your 500px account,” the statement added.