Thematic Reading - June 6, 2022

Catching up on thematic signals for Cybersecurity & Data Privacy

Dear reader,

Apologies for the lack of thematic signals and insights over the last few weeks, but Tematica’s Chief Investment Officer, Chris Versace, finally joined the club of folks that tested positive for covid. While he was down for the count, Chris is on the mend and his energy levels continue to improve daily. Because the flow of thematic signals didn’t realize Chris caught covid, the number of thematic confirmation points for our investment themes, indices, and models have piled up. To catch up, we’re going to focus on one particular theme in the next few editions of Thematic Signals+ to clear through the backlog of items we want to share with you.

With that in mind, today’s focus will be Cybersecurity & Data Privacy:

“The CNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey checks in with more than 2,000 small business owners every quarter to understand their outlook on the overall business environment along with their own business’s health. In the latest survey, just 5% of small business owners reported cybersecurity to be the biggest risk to their business right now… While it isn’t their top worry, almost four in 10 small business owners say they are very or somewhat concerned their business will be the victim of a cyber attack within the next 12 months.
America’s small businesses aren’t ready for a cyberattack

“Ahead of the Anti-Ransomware Day, we summarized the tendencies that characterize ransomware landscape in 2022. This year, ransomware is no less active than before: cybercriminals continue to threaten nationwide retailers and enterprises, old variants of malware return while the new ones develop… Just like legitimate software companies, cybercriminal groups are continually developing their tool kit for themselves and their customers – for example, to make the process of data exfiltration quicker and easier.”
New ransomware trends in 2022

“The personal information of more than 30,000 students was found on an improperly secured Elasticsearch server, security researchers with SafetyDetectives report… it exposed more than one million records representing the personally identifiable information (PII) of 30,000 to 40,000 students, the researchers estimate. The exposed information, they say, included full names, email addresses, and phone numbers, along with credit card information, transaction and purchased meals details, and login information stored in plain text.”
Personal Information of Over 30,000 Students Exposed in Unprotected Database

“Foxconn has confirmed that its Tijuana-based Foxconn Baja California factory was hit by ransomware in late May…. Foxconn also said that it is currently in the process of restoring normal operations at the factory, but did not provide a specific timeframe for completing the process…The manufacturer did not say whether data was stolen during the attack, but a threat group that operates the LockBit 2.0 ransomware recently claimed the theft of data from the facility, threatening to make it public unless a ransom is paid.”
Foxconn Confirms Ransomware Hit Factory in Mexico

“The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says over 46,000 people Americans have reported losing more than $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency to scams between January 2021 and March 2022. This is a significant increase compared to last year's report issued by the FTC, when the agency revealed that roughly $80 million were lost to cryptocurrency investment scams based on around 7,000 reports.”
Americans report losing over $1 billion to cryptocurrency scams

“The municipality of Palermo in Southern Italy suffered a cyberattack on Friday, which appears to have had a massive impact on a broad range of operations and services to both citizens and visiting tourists… Although local IT experts have been trying to restore the systems for the past three days, all services, public websites, and online portals remain offline.”
Italian city of Palermo shuts down all systems to fend off cyberattack