Top tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world today and list ways to explore these trends. This week, we’re looking at four ways you can minimize your attack surface. Organizational IT infrastructure is now more spread out, multi-layered, and complex than ever.

In an era where cyber threats are constantly evolving, protecting your identity and data from unauthorized access is more critical than ever. That's why we're excited to bring you the enhanced multifactor authentication (MFA) for Elastic Cloud. This feature significantly strengthens the security of your Elastic Cloud user and deployment data by aligning with industry best practices. You can go to Elastic Cloud and complete your MFA setup today.

Thousands of our customers are leveraging Snyk to implement their DevSecOps and shift-left strategies. However, with the increasing speed and complexity of applications, we also know it’s harder to stay in sync with development. It is increasingly difficult to maintain a clear view of all the software assets being developed, identify ownership and their importance to the business, and, most importantly, ensure that these assets are properly secured by Snyk.

In today’s fast-moving threat landscape, Hyperautomation is essential. But building workflows from scratch? That’s time you don’t have. That’s why we started with a library of pre-built templates, helping teams quickly configure security automation workflows. Templates made automation more accessible. Now, we’re taking the next step in that evolution and introducing Torq’s AI Workflow Builder. By harnessing the power of AI, we’re going beyond templates.

As cyber threats continue to be more sophisticated, the need for active directory security becomes paramount. Most Windows-based environments are heavily reliant on the AD configuration hence it’s a common target for intruders. This article outlines essential practices for AD hardening to protect your organization’s assets.

Government entities were in the top five industries targeted by both ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) attacks in 2023, according to Arctic Wolf. Additionally, the FBI reported that government entities were the third most-targeted sector by ransomware in 2023, and Arctic Wolf’s own research saw the average ransom for government organizations top $1 million USD that same year. It’s clear that cyber threats are plentiful for these entities.

Until recent decades, operational technology (OT) – a principal element in manufacturing – remained segmented from information technology (IT). OT systems, responsible for monitoring and controlling physical machinery and equipment, were manually managed by skilled workers, operated in isolation, and secure in their simplicity.

The modern age of renewable energy has seen a surge in solar panels and wind turbines. While these systems enhance sustainability, their digital technologies carry risks. Cybersecurity professionals must know the relevant nuances when integrating renewable systems.

Let’s catch up on the more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news gathered from articles across the web this week. This is what we have been reading about on our coffee break! I really don’t envy the support team on this one!

Like the speed of light, phishing remains a reliable constant in the cybercrime universe, never going out of fashion with fraudsters, always reinventing itself to stay relevant. As part of that reinvention, phishing-related scams increasingly use search engine optimization (SEO) to drive malicious websites higher in search results, outranking legitimate sites whose brands they often impersonate.