Company IT and security teams are facing cybersecurity challenges that increasingly test their defensive capabilities. Organizations have to protect themselves from a growing number of incidents (one attack every 39 seconds, according to the University of Maryland) and sophisticated threats, many of which have serious consequences.

When you hear the words “brute force," subtlety is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Indeed, classic brute-force cyber attacks use the most straightforward tactics—trial and error—to gain entry into a protected system. When brute force works, the attack's type, depth, and severity depend on the attacker's goals.

Fueled by the need to detect new, emerging threats while supplying meaningful feedback upstream to anticipate and prevent future ones, the modern SOC is the engine that protects organizations worldwide. The heart of that engine is common to all SOCs since they debuted more than a decade ago: people.

On Friday, May 27, 2022, Security vendor nao_sec identified a malicious document leveraging a zero-day remote code execution RCE vulnerability (CVE-2022-30190) in Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT). The actively exploited vulnerability exists when MSDT is called using the URL protocol from a calling application, such as Microsoft Word.

Today’s developers move at increasingly rapid speed – making it more critical than ever to identify and resolve code vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle. By tackling security early – instead of waiting until testing and deployment – engineering teams can reduce unnecessary patching and maintenance cycles, reduce risks, and ensure timely delivery of new features.

According to the 2021 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index , the finance and insurance industry sector experienced the most cyber attacks for the fourth year in a row. It’s no mystery why: Hackers go where the money is. And according to Verizon's 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), financial gain was the most common motive in data breaches across all industries: 93 percent of breaches involving companies with fewer than 1,000 employees were financially motivated.

AT&T Alien Labs does a tremendous job of developing and maintaining a database of observed Indicators of Compromise (IOC) that have been involved with at least one customer through the Open Threat Exchange (OTX).

As the attack surface expands and cyber threats continue to evolve, most organizations make security awareness training a key part of their cybersecurity programs. Especially now with growing evidence that social engineering tactics reap big rewards for bad actors and cataclysmic outcomes for enterprises of every size. To wit, a study has found that 88% of all data breaches involve mistakes by employees.

Whether for managing remote teams, supporting ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) policies, or simply another layer in a data protection strategy, services like Microsoft Intune offer greater control over the devices on your network. But using the data from these services often requires tedious prep work, and this process is likely repeated multiple times a week, if not daily. Tedious, repetitive, structured: these are all signs that a process can and should be automated.

With businesses constantly at risk of cyber threats, leveraging a Security Operations Centre (SOC) is one way for organisations to proactively monitor and manage their threat landscape. Whether it’s in-house or outsourced, a SOC can help companies implement a process-driven security framework that secures business information against the constant threat of a cyber attack.