Report: J&J facing billions of potential cyberattacks per day

Hackers have become increasingly successful with their ransomware attacks in recent weeks and have managed to strike at a number of vital U.S. industries. Now, with the development of COVID-19 vaccines, major pharma companies are feeling more pressure as well. 

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, Johnson & Johnson’s chief information security officer, Marene Allison, said that the company is now facing an astounding 15.5 billion cyber “incidents” per day.

According to Allison, a “much lower number” of the incidents are the types of attacks that warrant a follow-up investigation. But the potential attacks are coming from all sides. 

In the interview, Allison said that J&J has divided the cyber incidents into four main buckets: attacks from nation-states (think Russia, China, North Korea, etc); criminals (where ransomware attacks usually come from); hacktivists (individuals on a personal mission); and inside threats from within the company. 

Generally speaking, Allison says that the nation-state, hacktivist and criminal threats are tackled with increased security measures including malware detecting software, spearphishing, and third party services.

J&J has also stepped up its security measures around physical doses of the vaccine.

Read the full interview.