Open Policy Agent (OPA) allows developers to accelerate time to market and focus on their differentiated work, instead of spending their time figuring out how they are going to write bespoke authorization policies. With OPA handling authorization decisions across the stack, each service, app or platform API just has to handle enforcement of OPA decisions.

Holiday shopping is right around the corner, but unfortunately, Black Friday isn’t just an opportunity for shoppers and retailers — it’s also an opportunity for cybercriminals. While criminals have always been attracted by the money that changes hands on Black Friday, the last couple of years have been a magnet for cyber attacks. The pandemic means that more people than ever shopped online in 2020 — with shoppers spending $14.13 billion online last year on Black Friday.

We’re fortunate to have a depth and breadth of cybersecurity expertise here at ThreatQuotient, and through our partner network. And we take great pride in sharing that expertise with you in the form of high-quality, informative webinars throughout the year. In 2021, we covered a lot of important topics and wanted to make sure you didn’t miss our top five webinars for the year. Scan the overviews below and click on the links to watch those that capture your attention.

Log4Shell is a high severity vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) impacting Apache Log4j versions 2.0 to 2.14.1. It was discovered by Chen Zhaojun of Alibaba Cloud Security Team and disclosed via the project´s GitHub repository on December 9, 2021.

At Snyk we have some general points of principle that we use to help guide our security thinking and decision making. Firstly, it is always important to understand from whom we are protecting, as it has implications for how we need to act. As an example of this, if our artefact is a web server, then we need to protect it against untrusted users. Whilst if our artefact is encryption software, then we clearly need to protect it even from users with physical access to the system.

As security and development teams rushed to assess the now-notorious Log4Shell vulnerability published December 10 (CVE-2021-44228), another, more minor vulnerability was discovered in Log4j — CVE-2021-45046. To understand the newly-discovered vulnerability, it is important to get the full picture and background on the original Log4j issue.

A new API integration for Humio and Fylamynt helps joint customers improve the efficiency of their cloud operations teams by automating repetitive and manual operations tasks. Fylamynt, a low-code platform that delivers a developer’s approach to ITOps with site reliability engineering (SRE), works with Humio to empower faster response times to critical operational issues, reduce human error and increase productivity so DevOps teams can focus on adding value through innovation.

Dec. 29: Updated to cover three additional CVEs: CVE-2021-4104, CVE-2021-44832, and CVE-2021-42550 (in logback as opposed to log4j). Dec. 22: A joint Cybersecurity Advisory was issued by multiple national cybersecurity agencies providing mitigation guidance on addressing vulnerabilities in Apache’s Log4j software library: CVE-2021-44228 (known as “Log4Shell”), CVE-2021-45046, and CVE-2021-45105. Dec. 17: Please note the emergency directive from CISA on Log4j.

Ransomware attackers today have the technical skill and tools to analyze a target’s defenses and like a band of guerilla operatives attacking a more power adversary, the attackers avoid the teeth of the defense and hit their victim at its weakest point. All while layering in new tactics to force their victims to pay a ransom. To be prepared for this threat, an organization must have a plan in place to deal with the myriad of new tricks ransomware attackers have developed over the last few years.