TENTANG EPISODE INI
Two ransomware crews are claiming the same Fortune 500 company at the same time. It's the second week in a row this has happened. If you still think your business is too small to be worth a hacker's time, this is the week that idea dies.
*You're not facing one attacker anymore, you're facing a market of them.*
Bryan Hornung, Randy Bryan, and Reginald Andre break down this week's stories for executives, owners, and operators who don't have time to follow cyber news but can't afford to be blindsided.
First up: AECOM, a sixteen-billion-dollar engineering giant, is being claimed by two ransomware gangs in the same week. One lists 1.22 terabytes of stolen data. The other lists about 670 gigabytes. Same victim, side by side. More than 27,000 company email accounts are alleged to be floating around the dark web, and class-action lawyers filed before AECOM confirmed anything. For now, it all remains alleged. When a company this size gets picked over by two crews at once, budget and size aren't the shields many assumed they were.
Then Randy takes CenterPoint Energy, the Houston utility serving about seven million customers across four states. A hacker walked off with 7.49 million customer records, including names, addresses, account numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. The wild part: there was no sophisticated break-in. The attacker simply counted upward through the ID numbers on CenterPoint's public website because nobody limited how many records it would return. Any business with a customer-facing app can have this exact hole. The lawsuits arrived before the company even disclosed the breach.
Reginald closes with the number tying it all together. August 2026 was the worst month for ransomware ever recorded: 997 attacks, an all-time high averaging thirty-two a day. Business targets took the brunt, with law firms, tech companies, and finance firms rising fastest. Attacks on utilities doubled in a single month. Zoom out, and the picture gets worse: more than 7,500 victims over the past year, up nearly 25 percent, with over 60 brand-new gangs appearing. That's better than one a week. This flood of new crews is exactly why one victim now gets claimed by two of them.
Here's the takeaway for owners: the boring basics still win. Turn on that second login code everywhere, quickly patch anything facing the internet, and keep backups you have actually tested. None of that requires a big budget. It stops the large majority of what we cover.
• A Fortune 500 engineering firm gets claimed by two ransomware gangs in the same week
• A utility leaks 7.5 million customer records through a wide-open public website
• August 2026 becomes the worst month for ransomware ever recorded
• Why you're now up against a whole market of attackers, not just one
• The cheap, boring defenses that still stop most attacks
• Why "we're too small to be a target" no longer holds up
Security Squawk is a weekly podcast and live stream for business owners and executives.
Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/securitysquawk
Subscribe | Like | Share
#SecuritySquawk #CyberSecurity #AECOM #CenterPointEnergy #Ransomware #DataBreach #BusinessRisk #SmallBusiness #MSP #Utilities #Infosec #CyberRisk
*You're not facing one attacker anymore, you're facing a market of them.*
Bryan Hornung, Randy Bryan, and Reginald Andre break down this week's stories for executives, owners, and operators who don't have time to follow cyber news but can't afford to be blindsided.
First up: AECOM, a sixteen-billion-dollar engineering giant, is being claimed by two ransomware gangs in the same week. One lists 1.22 terabytes of stolen data. The other lists about 670 gigabytes. Same victim, side by side. More than 27,000 company email accounts are alleged to be floating around the dark web, and class-action lawyers filed before AECOM confirmed anything. For now, it all remains alleged. When a company this size gets picked over by two crews at once, budget and size aren't the shields many assumed they were.
Then Randy takes CenterPoint Energy, the Houston utility serving about seven million customers across four states. A hacker walked off with 7.49 million customer records, including names, addresses, account numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. The wild part: there was no sophisticated break-in. The attacker simply counted upward through the ID numbers on CenterPoint's public website because nobody limited how many records it would return. Any business with a customer-facing app can have this exact hole. The lawsuits arrived before the company even disclosed the breach.
Reginald closes with the number tying it all together. August 2026 was the worst month for ransomware ever recorded: 997 attacks, an all-time high averaging thirty-two a day. Business targets took the brunt, with law firms, tech companies, and finance firms rising fastest. Attacks on utilities doubled in a single month. Zoom out, and the picture gets worse: more than 7,500 victims over the past year, up nearly 25 percent, with over 60 brand-new gangs appearing. That's better than one a week. This flood of new crews is exactly why one victim now gets claimed by two of them.
Here's the takeaway for owners: the boring basics still win. Turn on that second login code everywhere, quickly patch anything facing the internet, and keep backups you have actually tested. None of that requires a big budget. It stops the large majority of what we cover.
• A Fortune 500 engineering firm gets claimed by two ransomware gangs in the same week
• A utility leaks 7.5 million customer records through a wide-open public website
• August 2026 becomes the worst month for ransomware ever recorded
• Why you're now up against a whole market of attackers, not just one
• The cheap, boring defenses that still stop most attacks
• Why "we're too small to be a target" no longer holds up
Security Squawk is a weekly podcast and live stream for business owners and executives.
Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/securitysquawk
Subscribe | Like | Share
#SecuritySquawk #CyberSecurity #AECOM #CenterPointEnergy #Ransomware #DataBreach #BusinessRisk #SmallBusiness #MSP #Utilities #Infosec #CyberRisk
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