The Winner of the Tournament of Cyber Trouble is. . .

The winner of the CybelAngel 2021 Tournament of Cyber Trouble is …

 the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack. 

The voting public recognized that the Colonial Pipeline attack created too much havoc to be denied being the top cyber trouble of the year. This attack targeted only one company but managed to affect millions across the eastern coast of the US. From New Jersey to Florida fuel shortages slowly brought cities to halt, leaving some stranded for lack of fuel and inspired hoarding so severe self-immolating accidents occurred. The fuel shortages were only the start. With that single attack, millions of people learned the words “ransomware attack”, this attention lead to international incidents between the US and Russia while the US Congress introduced legislation to harden cybersecurity across the nation.  Colonial Pipeline winning was not a foregone conclusion. There was competition from our second place story in Mircosoft Exchange Hacks and the third-place T-Mobile and Pegasus Spyware.  It’s important to note that our first and third place events, Colonial Pipeline and T-Mobile data breach were preventable. Colonial Pipeline was the result of exposed credentials sold on the dark web. T-Mobile’s breach started with a bit of shadow IT in the form of an unprotected router in a data center. Both digital risks could have been proactively prevented if companies were aware of them.  CybelAngel provides digital risk protection services that could give the targeted companies the awareness of these digital risks through our Dark Web Monitoring and Asset Discovery and Monitoring. You can take the first step in protecting your company and brand from digital risk by trying our exposure dashboard to see a real-time snapshot of your exposed digital assets.  For those wanting further information on the results of the Tournament read on below:  Match One: Colonial Pipeline vs EA Gaming. Winner: Colonial Pipeline – 82% Match Two: Kaseya vs Pegasus Spyware. Winner: Pegasus Spyware – 54% Match Three: Ireland HSE vs T-Mobile. Winner: T-Mobile – 71% Match Four: Twitch vs Microsoft Exchange Hacks. Winner: Mircosoft Exchange Hacks – 79% Match Five: Colonial Pipeline vs Pegasus Spyware. Winner Colonial Pipeline – 58% Match Six: T-Mobile vs Microsoft Exchange Hacks. Winner Microsoft Exchange Hacks – 52% Match Seven: Colonial Pipeline vs Microsoft Exchange Hacks. Winner Colonial Pipeline – 78%