In a recent LevelBlue incident response engagement, an analyst in our managed detection and response (MDR) security operations center (SOC) responded to an alarm that was triggered by a suspicious email/inbox rule. The rule aimed to conceal responses to an internal phishing attempt from the account user, so the attacker could solicit funds from the company's users.

Microsoft SQL Server is a popular relational database management system (RDBMS). However, determining the effective access rights of users is difficult because in Active Directory (AD) environments, effective access is determined based on not only the user’s direct permissions but also their membership in SQL Server roles, AD groups and Local Windows groups.

What are your most important corporate assets? Like most companies, you probably have mission-critical assets and those that play a smaller role in your revenue and continuity. You are also likely to be using Vulnerability Management or Assessment tools to lock down where those assets can potentially be compromised. Vulnerability Prioritization combines asset importance and potential for risk.

Businesses manage a series of balancing acts every day—between innovation and reliability, for instance, investment or profit, speed or security. Each leader contributes to how decisions are weighed and made, and traditionally CISOs have been expected to operate at one end of that scale, as the chief protector of the business.

As businesses engage in increasingly complex and interdependent relationships, ensuring all parties maintain high cybersecurity standards becomes essential. One method to achieve this is using security scores, which are similar to personal credit scores, and assessing the efficacy of an organization's cybersecurity program. However, there are certain changes and additions that should be made to how scoring is conducted that will ensure a more accurate scores, which will benefit stakeholders at all levels.

Your passwords should be at least 16 characters long. The longer your password is, the more secure it is. This is because of something known as password entropy which refers to how the combination of the characters that make up a password determines the strength of it. Password entropy considers the length and character variation of a password to calculate how difficult it would be for cybercriminals to crack or guess it.

Many people mistakenly believe that the dark web is an obscure corner of the internet that doesn't affect them, but the reality is far more concerning. Dark web monitoring is crucial for identifying potential threats that can jeopardize personal and organizational security. From stolen data and illegal goods to sophisticated cyber threats like ransomware and phishing attacks, the dark web is a breeding ground for malicious activities.

Splunk is proud to be recognized as a Leader in SIEM by Forrester, Gartner and IDC. Download the latest Magic Quadrant to see why. Get the report → Learn more about Splunk's Security Products & Solutions: The lucrativeness of cybersecurity keeps going up, with more companies realizing the need to employ reliable people to forestall and manage cyberattacks. That means there are plenty of security jobs available...however, the right people for this job aren’t always easy to find and hire.

(A thought from The Matrix: Neo likely used a SIEM before he took the red pill and could see the matrix without one...) One of the best ways to monitor security-related activities for your organization is to collect audit logs from every network device and analyze those logs for activities which violate acceptable behavior. This is precisely the role of a SIEM or Security Information and Event Manager. Let me simplify your life by providing some best practice suggestions for deploying and using a SIEM.

Could your employees be unintentionally putting your business at risk? While companies prioritize protection against external cyber threats, the often-overlooked unintentional insider threats can lead to significant financial and reputational risks for your business. These threats can come from simple human errors, such as accidental data sharing, misconfigurations, or falling victim to phishing attacks.