Cybersecurity Threats

Healthcare is the most targeted industry for cyberattacks globally, and Houston’s robust healthcare ecosystem — medical centers, private practices, insurance companies, and health systems — makes it a prime regional target. The 2024 Change Healthcare breach, which disrupted claims processing for thousands of Houston providers, demonstrated the real-world impact of healthcare cyberattacks. The Healthcare Threat … Read more

Houston’s energy companies face a cybersecurity risk unique to their industry: the convergence of operational technology (OT) — the systems that control physical operations — with corporate information technology (IT) networks. This convergence creates pathways from the internet to industrial control systems that operators spent decades keeping physically isolated. The OT/IT Convergence Risk Operational technology … Read more

Nation-state threat actors — criminal groups operating under the direction or tolerance of foreign governments — represent the most sophisticated cyber threats facing Texas businesses. Houston’s concentration of energy infrastructure, defense contractors, and financial institutions makes Texas a high-priority target for state-sponsored cyber operations. Which Nations Target Texas Infrastructure? The primary state-sponsored threat actors targeting … Read more

While external attackers dominate cybersecurity headlines, insider threats account for 34% of healthcare data breaches. For Houston healthcare organizations — medical practices, hospitals, dental groups, and behavioral health providers — the insider threat is a real and present HIPAA liability. Who Is an Insider Threat? Insider threats in healthcare fall into three categories: malicious insiders … Read more

Zero-day vulnerabilities — security flaws with no available patch — are no longer exclusive to nation-state attacks. Criminal groups actively acquire and exploit zero-days against Houston SMBs when the vulnerability affects widely used software like Microsoft Office, VPN appliances, or web browsers. What Is a Zero-Day Vulnerability? A zero-day is a software vulnerability that the … Read more

Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) has transformed cybercrime into an industry. Criminal groups develop ransomware platforms and license them to affiliates — who target, compromise, and extort victim organizations. Texas businesses, particularly in Houston, face active campaigns from multiple RaaS groups. How Ransomware-as-a-Service Works RaaS operates like a business franchise. Core developers build and maintain the ransomware platform, … Read more

Multi-factor authentication is the single most impactful security control for Houston businesses — blocking 99.9% of automated credential attacks. But attackers have developed sophisticated techniques to bypass traditional MFA, and Houston businesses need to understand these methods to deploy appropriate defenses. MFA Fatigue (Push Bombing) MFA fatigue attacks — also called push bombing — involve … Read more

Cloud misconfigurations are now the leading cause of cloud data breaches, responsible for 19% of all incidents. Houston businesses migrating to Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Microsoft 365 often create security gaps through incorrect configurations that expose data to the internet or to unauthorized users. The Most Common Cloud Misconfigurations The cloud misconfigurations most frequently causing … Read more

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed phishing. AI tools can now write flawless, highly personalized phishing emails in seconds — eliminating the grammatical errors and poor formatting that training programs taught employees to watch for. Houston businesses need updated defenses for the AI phishing era. What AI Changes About Phishing Traditional phishing detection relied on spotting … Read more