Cyber attacks are no longer a future problem or a Silicon Valley issue. They are happening right now across the United States, quietly and relentlessly, targeting local governments, public agencies, schools, police departments, fire services, and critical infrastructure that most people rely on every day. In this episode of the Security Squawk Podcast, we break down the uncomfortable truth about the current cyber threat landscape and why much of it is flying under the radar. We start with a major data breach involving 700Credit, a financial services company widely used by car dealerships across the country. The breach impacted an estimated 5.8 million consumers, exposing sensitive personal information including names, addresses, birth dates, and Social Security numbers. What makes this incident especially troubling is that it originated through a third-party integration and went undetected until it was too late. This is a textbook example of how supply chain risk, weak API oversight, and poor third-party visibility continue to plague organizations of all sizes. For business owners, IT leaders, and managed service providers, this breach highlights a critical lesson. Security controls inside your own environment are meaningless if your partners, vendors, or integrations are not held to the same standard. Attackers know this, and they are exploiting it aggressively. Next, we shift to a growing and deeply concerning trend involving nation-state threat actors, particularly Russian-backed groups targeting network edge devices. Firewalls, VPN appliances, routers, and other edge infrastructure are now prime targets because they offer direct access to internal networks and often remain poorly monitored or improperly configured. These attacks are not always sophisticated zero-day exploits. In many cases, they succeed because of exposed management interfaces, outdated firmware, or weak credentials. This matters because edge devices sit at the front door of nearly every organization. Once compromised, they allow attackers to persist quietly, move laterally, and stage future attacks without triggering traditional endpoint defenses. The takeaway is clear. If you are not actively inventorying, patching, and monitoring your edge infrastructure, you are already behind. Then we pull the lens back even further and focus on what may be the most underreported cyber crisis happening today. Public sector organizations across the United States are under sustained cyber attack. Cities, towns, school districts, emergency services, and municipal agencies are being hit week after week. These incidents rarely make national headlines. Instead, they show up in small local news outlets, if they are reported at all. We discuss a real-world incident in Attleboro, Massachusetts, where a cybersecurity event disrupted online municipal services and briefly appeared on local television. Stories like this are happening everywhere. From ransomware attacks that shut down city services to breaches that expose resident data, public organizations are being targeted because attackers know they are often underfunded, understaffed, and slow to recover. Using data from ransomware.live and other tracking resources, we highlight how widespread these attacks really are. Thousands of U.S.-based victims are logged publicly, many of them tied to government or quasi-government entities. This is not random. It is a calculated strategy by cybercriminals who understand the pressure public agencies face to restore services quickly, often making them more likely to pay ransoms or quietly rebuild without public disclosure. Throughout the episode, we connect these stories to practical lessons for businesses, MSPs, and IT professionals. Cybersecurity is no longer about preventing every breach. It is about resilience, visibility, and response. It is about understanding where your real risk lies and taking proactive steps before an incident forces your hand. If you work in IT, run an MSP, manage infrastructure, or support public organizations, this episode delivers insight you can use immediately. We cut through the noise, skip the fear marketing, and focus on what actually matters in today's threat environment. Security Squawk exists to make cybersecurity real, relevant, and actionable. If this episode brings value to you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you want to support the show directly, the easiest way is to buy us a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/securitysquawk Your support helps us keep producing honest conversations about the threats most people never see until it's too late.
