Vulnerability management (VM) is an essential process through which organizations can reduce risk in their environments. But myths and misconceptions surrounding VM abound. For instance, organizations commonly approach vulnerability management in the same way as they do patch management. Others are guilty of believing that all attacks rely on vulnerabilities, while others still are under the false impression that all software patches will work without a hitch.

European police have arrested six people as part of an investigation into a theft which saw €24 million (US $27 million) stolen from users of cryptocurrency exchange. In a press release, Europol described how five men and one woman were simultaneously arrested on Tuesday morning at the homes of the suspects in Charlcombe, Lower Weston and Staverton (UK) and Amsterdam and Rotterdam (the Netherlands).

Cybercriminals have learnt something very valuable in the last couple of weeks: in order to regain access to their data, cities in Florida are prepared to pay out huge Bitcoin ransoms to hackers. Less than a week after the city of Riviera Beach, 80 miles from Miami, unanimously voted to pay US $600,000 worth of Bitcoins to an extortionist who had locked their IT systems with ransomware, a second city has come to the same decision.

Defining a data breach can be tough for a lot of organizations. However, since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, organizations that operate in the EU need to follow regulatory guidelines that can have real business implications if ignored. But when a cyber incident hits your organization, do you know if it needs to be disclosed to the public? How prepared are you to let your customers and authorities know?

In the attacker’s world, all vulnerabilities and potential exploits work toward the hacker’s advantage — not yours, not mine. This includes WordPress hacks. While living back east (over a decade ago), I was friends with several small business owners. One weekend morning, the owner of the local photography studio called me at 7 am and said: “I think I’ve been hacked.” I could hear the soft clicking of a keyboard in the background.

We’ve previously discussed best practices for securing Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, but this time we are going to turn our attention to Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is growing at an impressive 83 percent year over year, but generally receives less focus than AWS and Azure. We can use some of our best practice cloud security knowledge to outline some fundamental steps for keeping Google Cloud Platform secure.

According to CIS, “Organizations that do not scan for vulnerabilities and proactively address discovered flaws face a significant likelihood of having their computer systems compromised.” While vulnerability management (VM) isn’t new, I’ve seen it evolve a lot over my 22 years in the industry. Here are some big trends: The idea of an asset has changed and grown over the years. Back in the ‘90s, it was a PC or a server.

Normally, when you hear about stocks dropping, it’s due to some scandal or crisis. Market watchers will tell you that a range of elements can affect the value of a publicly traded company and cause stock prices to rise or fall. Consumer confidence is a major factor that influences a company’s reputation and perceived value. What does that have to do with data breaches? A lot more than you might think.

The recent Vectra 2019 Spotlight Report on Healthcare indicates that the proliferation of healthcare internet-of-things (IoT) devices, along with a lack of network segmentation, insufficient access controls and reliance on legacy systems, has created an increasing attack surface that can be exploited by cyber criminals determined to steal personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) in addition to disrupt healthcare delivery processes.

What camp are you in? In the camp that believes in air-gaps, or the other set that says they truly do not exist? Air-gap networks are networks that are physically and logically isolated from other networks where communication between these networks is not physically or logically possible.

With more business applications moving to the cloud, the ability to assess network behavior has changed from a primarily systems administration function to a daily security operations concern. And whilst sec-ops teams are already familiar with firewall and network device log tools, these can be of limited used in a “cloud first” business where much of the good traffic that occurs is hard to distinguish from potentially risky traffic.

The purpose of this series of blogs is to guide you on your journey up the Vulnerability Management Mountain (VMM). Like climbing a mountain, there is a lot of planning and work required, but when you get to the top, the view is amazing and well worth the journey. Your progress will depend on your funding and priorities, but climbing at a quick steady pace will help secure your environment.

In a dark room lit only by the light from four computer monitors sits a hacker named Hector (not his real name). You can hear the faint pulse of an EDM track coming from his headphones as Hector taps away on his computer’s keyboard. The above description could serve as the setting for a hacker movie set in the early 2000s. But it doesn’t work in today’s context. Nowadays, Hector sits in a brightly lit room with multiple screens at his disposal.

It’s been a few weeks since Verizon released the 12th edition of its Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). For this publication, Verizon’s researchers studied 41,686 security incidents in which a response was necessary. These analysts found that 2,013 of those incidents were data breaches in that some sort of information was actually compromised.

YouTube, the world’s top provider of streaming multimedia content, keeps reaching new heights in terms of its popularity. Nearly two billion monthly users and five billion videos watched every single day – these impressive statistics speak for themselves, and the numbers are steadily growing year over year. Everybody loves YouTube and so do cybercriminals, only in their very own nefarious way.

When I was younger, I played a variety of team sports and enjoyed competing against opponents with my teammates. Winning was always a matter of applying sound tactics and strategy, attacking and defending well and using a blend of skill, talent and luck. Now that I’m older, I watch more than I play, and I’m able to appreciate the many lessons team sports teach, especially at the professional level. With sports, we can tackle technical topics in a relatable way.

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) include Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and other control system configurations such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC). They are typically used in industries such as electric, water, oil and natural gas, transportation, chemical, pharmaceutical and manufacturing (e.g., automotive, aerospace). These control systems are vital to the operation of U.S.

DevOps is revolutionizing the way enterprises deliver apps to the market by blending software development and information technology operations. This convergence creates an assembly line for the cloud, as Tim Erlin wrote for The State of Security, by increasing the rate at which companies can develop apps and deliver them to users.

So, you have 2000 network devices in your environment and everyone is telling you that you have to rotate all 2000 device passwords every 30, 60 or 90 days (at a minimum) — who has time for that?! How are you going to manage this? The task seems monumental and time-consuming! If nothing is done, then your security/compliance posture will worsen due to reusing passwords that are easy to remember across assets. In addition, passwords could become stale and give adversaries more time to crack them.

The move to the cloud — in many ways — is a return to the early days of computing. When I took my first computer class in 1978, we used an IBM 360 system time share. We rented out time on a remote system — sent our jobs over a modem to a computer at a university — and got back the results of the program run. Today, we’re using the cloud, which is just a fancy version of the old time-share systems.

In May 2019, Verizon Enterprise released the 12th edition of its Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Researchers analyzed a total of 41,686 security incidents, of which there were 2,013 data breaches, for the publication. More than half (52 percent) of those reported breaches involved some form of hacking. The report listed the most prominent hacking variety and vector combinations, with “vulnerability exploitation” making the top three.