Aaron Cooper is the Security Operations Manager at TripActions with 20+ years of experience working in a variety of enterprise infrastructures. He specializes in managing and designing secure network environments to meet the needs of financial and corporate customers, managing security operations centers, and designing and implementing highly secure and available data networks while maintaining HIPAA, SOX, and PCI compliance.

With most of us working from anywhere, smartphones and tablets have become a big part of how we stay productive. At the same time, the average cost of data breaches continues to rise, averaging $4.35 million in 2022. While there are numerous threat vectors organizations have to juggle, this got me thinking about how applications and device vulnerabilities are currently managed.

The fourth annual Devo SOC Performance ReportTM shows security professionals believe the SOC is significant to their organization’s cybersecurity strategy. As noted in our last blog, 77% of respondents say their SOC is “very important” or “essential” to their organization. But there’s pain behind the scenes as well. The report notes the majority of security professionals are feeling overwhelmed due to too much work and not enough resources.

According to Statistica, the average response time to a ransomware attack is 20 days. 20 days where your customers can’t order your product, 20 days where your end-users are unable to access important information - 20 days of incurred downtime for your organization resulting in massive profit losses and reputation damage. I think it goes without saying, time is of the essence during a ransomware attack.

As a developer, you probably rely on open source every day. Open source code is incredibly beneficial for building and improving products, whether personal or professional. But have you considered going a step further and contributing to open source projects as well? Taking this approach can improve your skills and make a positive impact on the software development community at large. Yet, taking the leap can seem difficult. Where do you start?

Imagine you are developing an application – no matter if it’s a web, mobile, or desktop app – and your IDE informs you of security vulnerabilities as you code. The release of Code Sight 2022.9.0 for VS Code and IntelliJ makes that a reality. With Synopsys’ industry-leading static application security testing (SAST) engine powering Code Sight’s Rapid Scan Static, there is no configuration or tuning. It’s actual sophisticated taint flow and not just lint.

Security hygiene is the process of reviewing your current cybersecurity posture and implementing security controls that mitigate data breach risks. As you mature your security hygiene, you create a centralized log management strategy that defines a path to a more robust posture. As part of this, you need to accommodate for the way threats evolve, including those unique to your specific industry or business.

When developers need to handle URLs in different forms for different purposes — such as browser history navigation, anchored targets, query parameters, and so on — we often turn to Java. However, its frequent use motivates attackers to exploit its vulnerabilities. This risk of exploitation is why we must implement URL validation in our JavaScript applications.

As head of the product department at Azalea Health, I need to understand what our market needs. Based on the conversations that we've had with hospitals and clinics, enterprise-grade security is something they desperately need but rightfully expect their EHR system to provide. That’s why it’s important for our organization to take the responsibility of securing health data off their shoulders.

Have you noticed it’s never “Hey, someone got by a firewall” or “WOW, they bypassed the network security”? No. It’s always about the Device. It’s the same for hackers because everything else is just a means to an end, and that end is your Device! Imagine, late at night, driving around the Amusement Park security gate, then busting open the locked gated fence. These actions are necessary to get to the big score, the Rides! Yaaahoo!