Article by
Casper Manes
In case you've been enjoying a luddite vacation for the past
couple of weeks, you might have seen some of the headlines about
ransomware targeting Office 365. This is a classic example of FUD
gone wild, (FUD, in case you don't know, stands for Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt) and how a single post, whether well written
or not, whether accurate or not, can be picked up and suddenly
becomes gospel on the Internet. Here's a little more fact-based
view of what's happened.
If you were to click through some of the headlines and tweets
and reports reporting on reports, you'd find it all goes back
to a single post from a single third-party security vendor known as
Avanan. Avanan offers products and solutions for a variety of
security challenges, including DLP, antimalware, data sanitization,
and more. On June 27, Avanan author Steven Toole posted an article
on the Avanan website alleging that a "widespread attack on
Office 365 Corporate Users with
