Last year, F-Secure and the University of Helsinki launched an online course series called Cyber Security Base with F-Secure. It’s a free, massive open online course designed to give people the knowledge and skills they need to begin a career in cyber security. Last year’s course … | Continue reading
It’s October so it’s Cyber Security Awareness Month again. We’re about to begin biggest online shopping season of the year, so this campaign is well-timed to highlight “the simple steps that can be taken to protect data, whether personal, financial and/or professional.” To celebr … | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Hannu Konttinen, UX Lead at F-Secure. I have been doing a lot of UX recruitment lately and have seen a lot of applications. Some really impressive ones… and some not quite so impressive. Here’s my take on the application process, from the hiring manager’ … | Continue reading
You can get F-Secure TOTAL or FREEDOME VPN for 50% off until Monday the 27th of November only when you use code CYBERMONDAY at checkout. Sorry, offer valid for new F-Secure customers only. “Our online identities are being targeted because they are valuable,” Mikko Hypponen, F-Sec … | Continue reading
If you’re an iPhone user who’s downloaded iOS 11, you’ll want to pay attention to this recent Tweet from F-Secure’s head of hardware security Andrea Barisani: PSA: iOS 11 new control center WiFi and Bluetooth toggles don’t actually turn off their respective radios. — Andrea Baris … | Continue reading
Finding top talent is much easier for our recruiters at F-Secure in Finland, for a pretty obvious reason. “We have a strong brand in Finland,” Johanna Kurki, F-Secure’s Global Cyber Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding Lead, explained in a new report called Milton Insights IV: … | Continue reading
Raspberry Pi’s not only sound delicious, they are fantastic little computers for all your science, hobby and security needs. They are cheap, easy to use and provide a wide range of possibilities due the fact that several kinds of operating systems can be ran on them, the availabi … | Continue reading
It’s pretty much agreed – the Equifax breach is maddening. Headlines scream out “Dumpster fire,” “Equifax has no excuse,” and “CEO should be fired today.” The leak of sensitive data (including social security numbers) of 143 million Americans, plus “certain UK and Canadian reside … | Continue reading
Since the time that we launched F-Secure SENSE, our security router for your connected home, it has remained important to us that we keep in touch with our user community about the specifics of the product. SENSE is, after all, one of the first routers designed to protect IoT dev … | Continue reading
The absence of regulation is what has resulted in the innovation of software we see today. But as hardware and software merge, as the shelf life of software becomes the shelf life of hardware, we are going to need a number of guarantees to ensure that the benefits keep outweighi … | Continue reading
“Prediction is very difficult,” physicist Niels Bohr once said, “especially about the future.” But during his talk at Black Hat USA “ The Epocholypse 2038: What’s in Store for the Next 20 Years,” Mikko Hypponen — F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer — made a couple of predictions th … | Continue reading
Most of us were full-grown by the time we ever had a smartphone or a tablet in our hands. This obviously won’t be true for your kids, who may already be more handy with an iPad than you are. As online life grows more vast, intense and connected to real life, this is a new […] | Continue reading
The good news about buying a used smartphone is that chances of it being infected with a persistent threat that could spy on you and your data are slight, as long as you take basic precautions. “I wouldn’t pay for the phone unless I was sure I could do a factory reset on it,” Sea … | Continue reading
When Sean Sullivan, F-Secure Security Advisor, discusses Android privacy and security issues with journalists, invariably he runs into a problem when it comes to pinpointing settings. “There are a plurality of Android experiences,” he told me, referring to the many versions of th … | Continue reading
This is a guest post. As e-commerce has grown more widespread and sophisticated in recent years, so too has the attendant risk of fraud. In the past five years, roughly one in three Americans have had their credit card information stolen, and fraud attacks continue to grow more … | Continue reading
We’ve seen great success with our past Reddit AMAs, during which people from across the globe can gather and get the inside scoop on their favorite niche topics and industry experts. We’ve used the platform to discuss things like data privacy, online security and even how to tamp … | Continue reading
Most kids starting school for the first time this year will likely not spend very much of their lives sitting in front of a TV just waiting for something good to come on. “Today’s children are digital natives who don’t have predefined models how to utilize technology, which means … | Continue reading
As the definition of a home WiFi network is slowly changing from “a necessary thing to keep your PC online” to “central nervous system of a living space”, it’s becoming more and more important to understand the basics of how they work. The security of your home’s devices is start … | Continue reading
Here’s a staggering statistic: In 2016, F-Secure Labs found that 80% of attachments in spam emails were ransomware. That means if you clicked on any 8 of 10 of those files, your data could be held hostage by online criminals until you paid a fee that’s generally well over a hundr … | Continue reading
If the Internet has a birthday, it would be September 2, 1969. On that day, for the first time in known history, two computers communicated with each other. This means the Internet is quickly approaching its 50th birthday and already well over 3 billion people use it — 9 out of 1 … | Continue reading
This is a guest post from F-Secure fellow Kamil Janowski. Have you ever worked on a project that aims to satisfy everyone – everyone, except for the developers who have to develop it? On one hand you want to create something that looks nice and fast, so that the product can attra … | Continue reading
The internet is an important and natural part of modern teenagers’ lives. This means that as a parent, it’s crucial that you understand how and what they use it for and discuss these topics with your teen. Teenagers spend a large portion of their day connected to the web. They us … | Continue reading
You rarely have to go looking for cyber security news anymore. Whether it’s WannaCry, NotPetya or a vulnerability in solar panels that could lead to hackers targeting the electrical grid, the security of computers is headline news and it’s increasingly synonymous with the securin … | Continue reading
This is a guest post by F-Secure fellow Ruediger Trost. What’s it like to work at F-Secure? For me, it’s about delivering as a team. Being a Sales Engineer means that you have to work closely with Account Managers and the Inside Sales teams, as we do most of our customer meetings … | Continue reading
This spring, we proudly launched our newest product, F-Secure SENSE. SENSE is the combination of a smart security router, an advanced security app and industry-leading cloud protection. In short, this three-in-one device is our answer to data protection and online security in a m … | Continue reading
Hackers rarely invent new tricks. Rather, they just find new ways to use old ones. When Tom Van de Wiele — F-Secure Principal Security Consultant — was growing up, taking over IRC accounts and channels was the thing. “Now people amuse themselves with social media accounts and bri … | Continue reading
Internet-connected versions iRobot’s robotic maid Roomba aren’t just sucking up dirt — they’re also mapping your home. The company disclosed Roomba’s secondary talent to Reuters this week and announced that anonymized versions of its customers’ digital maps may soon be for sale t … | Continue reading
In 2017, for the great majority of people, privacy is on life support. For the great majority of people, ownership is also becoming an obsolete concept, further accelerating the death of privacy – how can you truly have any privacy when everything you have is owned and controlled … | Continue reading
If you woke up from a ten-year long nap this morning, you might be surprised to hear the advice for securing your computer hasn’t changed much. Sure, the devices are way better, the connections way faster and buffering is heading the way of the floppy disk. But you’ll still hear … | Continue reading
This is guest post by F-Secure trainee Mari Mäkinen. The cyber security market is extremely fascinating, highly competitive and very fast-paced, which contributes to the fact that there’s never a dull day at work. Since I started at F-Secure two months ago, two huge outbreaks of … | Continue reading
Things used to be a lot simpler. When consumer internet first became mainstream in the late nineties, homes rarely had more than one device that connected online. This was just as well, because in the dial-up age our internet connection used the same analogue frequencies as our p … | Continue reading
It’s a well-known fact that Finland is known for cutting-edge and innovative design. Catering to the Finns’ affinity for aesthetics is the country’s annual Housing Fair event, which takes place during the region’s long, summer days that are cherished by both locals and visitors a … | Continue reading
On a recent trip to the Finnish Archipelago, F-Secure security advisor Sean Sullivan scanned the public Wi-Fi networks to see what he’d come across. On the boat that cruised through the largest island group in the world, he found 390 devices. At the hotel, another 129. “There wer … | Continue reading
In less than two months, the world has seen the two biggest ransomware outbreaks ever — WannaCry and Petya/ NotPetya/ EternalPetya. While each malware was unique and likely authored by different sources, both had significant factors in common. Both threats spread like a worm thro … | Continue reading
The knowns about NotPetya ransomware outbreak, which spread around the globe last week, have grown but many unknowns remain. Chief among them are why it was released when it was, which seems to be way too early. “What’s really bothering me is the obvious lack of testing that went … | Continue reading
When a global outbreak like Petya ransomware hits, F-Secure Labs gets pizza. Watching threat is hopscotching across continents, it may seem as if there’s nothing else to life than work, computers and the Internet. But luckily, those pizzas only come a few times a year. Cyberlife … | Continue reading
People want fast, easy internet access, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. And that can be a bit of challenge when organizing events like music festivals, camps and other outdoor activities. These networks have to be put together quickly, and sometimes without having … | Continue reading
Are we still calling this outbreak Petya? Yes. Microsoft Defender detected it as “Petya.A”. “We have verified that the Petya MBR code from a variant last December is very similar to the MBR code of this new variant,” says Karmina Aquino, Service Lead at F-Secure Labs. “There are … | Continue reading
An outbreak of a particularly nasty ransomware family is making its way across the globe. And while the current outbreak has similarities with last month’s WannaCry epidemic, security researchers warn that the current campaign is much more professional, and potentially much worse … | Continue reading
Spam emails still work. After decades of annoying us, spam is still one of the most effective ways to spread highly profitable threats like ransomware or scam you into revealing your credit card information. Ironically, as internet security improves — killing off threats like exp … | Continue reading
Throughout history, forward-looking innovations have changed our lives for the better. Nearly 30 years after we started connecting with each other like never before using the internet, we’re introducing F-Secure SENSE, a seat belt for our connected world. While we’re here, let’s … | Continue reading
This is a guest post by Saara Jantunen, a researcher at the Finnish research Agency of the Finnish Defence Forces. Election hacking is perhaps the most topical example of what the combination of hostile information-technological and information-psychological activities can mean i … | Continue reading
The following article may be a smidgen tongue-in-cheek – as they say in Russia, “every joke contains an element of joke.” You have been warned. Let’s do a bit of mathematics: if we combine a key axiom of Shakespeare (“music be the food of love“) with one from David & Bacharach (“ … | Continue reading
This is a guest post from F-Secure Fellow Marita Markkula. My name is Marita – and I am passionate about building businesses and teams with purpose and growth mindset. I have been an F-Secure Fellow since the beginning of 2015. At first I was responsible for global sales and mark … | Continue reading
“If you plug something into the electrical grid in the future, you will also plug it into the internet grid,” Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer, said at the launch evening of Vodafone IoT Hackathon at the Digital Catapult Centre in London, before introducing the “ … | Continue reading
In the modern world, the majority of us thrive on the convenience that online services give to our lives. These services allow us to keep tabs on our social circles, manage our finances and get important work done all from the comfort of our internet-connected devices. Convenie … | Continue reading
If you traveled to the United States in 2016, you were twice as likely to have your electronic devices searched as you were just a year before, in 2015. That may sound ominous but the chances of an U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent actually powering up your device for a “d … | Continue reading
The growth of the Internet of Things is happening so fast that security is just an afterthought, or in some cases, completely ignored. Manufacturers don’t prioritize it, consumers don’t demand it and regulators seem to be waiting for bigger disasters than the Mirai botnet — which … | Continue reading