Governments around the world are struggling to contain the rapid spread of a multibillion‑dollar cyber scam industry that emerged in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar, has now taken root in South America, Africa and Eastern Europe, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently said, according to a recent Reuters report.

Bangladesh’s ICT Division, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has released a draft version of the ‘National Digital Transformation Strategy’ on February 16, 2025.

The FBI has recently conducted a large-scale operation to hack approximately 4,200 computers across the United States, targeting the removal of PlugX, a malware linked to Chinese state-backed hacking groups, according to the US Department of Justice.

A critical flaw in Google’s OAuth authentication system, a way for users to grant third-party applications access to their Google account information without sharing their password, has left millions of user accounts vulnerable to potential data theft, according to a recent report by Truffle security, an open-source security project.

Sophos, a cybersecurity solutions company, has released its cybersecurity predictions for 2025, highlighting critical trends, emerging trends, and issues such as vulnerabilities in artificial intelligence systems, the persistence of ransomware, and new attacker tactics.

The Cyber Defence Innovation Challenge (CDIC) was a multi-phase competition encouraging creative approaches to cyber safety.

The campaign sought to tackle the vulnerabilities arising from Bangladesh’s rapid digital transformation.

Cyber-attacks are on the rise in Bangladesh, highlighting the need for robust security.

Sophos, a cybersecurity solutions company, has recently released a new report titled “Pacific Rim,” revealing its five-year-long defensive and counter-offensive operations against a complex network of cyber adversaries, allegedly linked to China, that have targeted critical infrastructure across Southeast Asia.

A single breach can lead to disastrous outcomes, causing financial loss, reputational damage, and operational disruption. This risk means businesses need to adopt more effective threat response mechanisms to defend against the evolving threat landscape.

Kaspersky Labs, the Russia-based cybersecurity firm, has stated on its US website that the company will be leaving the United States. This announcement took place about a month after the US government banned Kaspersky from selling its antivirus software in the country.

Businesses around the world are becoming more adept at handling cybersecurity, thus leading to a global decrease in cyber insurance premiums, states a recent report by Howden Insurance, a global broker firm.

Security is one of the major aspects in our life that we think about on a daily basis. In today's environment, cyber risks are just as significant as physical ones. The demand for cybersecurity, a word used to describe defence against threats related to the internet, has grown dramatically as society becomes increasingly digitally oriented.

Government still failing to protect citizens’ private information

Institutions must equip students with skills to steer through the cyber world's complexities.

Cybersecurity researcher Bob Dyachenko and the Cybernews team have unveiled a massive data leak, referred to as the ‘Mother of all Breaches’ (MOAB), containing 12 terabytes of information encompassing 26 billion records. This supermassive breach contains data from numerous previous breaches, including major platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Adobe, Canva, Badoo, Weibo, Tencent, MySpace, Telegram, Dropbox, Daily Motion etc. making it potentially the largest-ever discovered data leak.

A new type of malware exploit has been discovered, in which hackers can gain access to Google accounts without the need for a password, according to a recent report by CloudSEK, a cyber threat monitoring platform. As per the report, this form of cyberattack leverages a vulnerability related to third-party cookies and poses a serious threat to user privacy.

The cybersecurity company Sophos has recently released two reports about the use of AI in cybercrime, which talk about how massive scam campaigns can be pulled off using generative AI like ChatGPT, and how some cyber criminals are sceptical and even concerned about using AI for their attacks.

To successfully construct a truly smart nation, governments must prioritise smart cybersecurity as a cornerstone of their digital transformation strategy.

In the face of sophisticated cyber threats like phishing, ransomware, supply chain attacks, and complex attacks that are often targeted and live, organisations can no longer afford to handle cybersecurity without the support of a trusted vendor.