Most hunting enthusiasts agree that the thrill of hunting lies in the chase. Equipped with experience and tools of their trade, hunters skillfully search for signs of prey — a broken twig, a track in the mud. CrowdStrike® Falcon OverWatch™ threat hunters are no different. They search for signs of their prey — of adversaries lurking in the dark — and these signs are called hunting leads.

IT professionals use many tools to streamline cybersecurity tasks, including network security monitoring, penetration testing, network intrusion detection, and encryption. This not only reduces the risk of common security breaches and cyber attacks; it also protects your business’s sensitive and private data from the prying eyes of attackers. That said, not all IT security tools are equal. Some security solutions do a great job of protecting your systems and networks from malicious activities.

This month, the NCSC and its Cyber Essentials delivery partner IASME will update the technical requirements for the 2023 Cyber Essentials scheme. These changes come as part of a regular review of the scheme’s technical controls, ensuring that it continues to help UK organisations guard against the most common cyber threats. Changes come into play on 24th April 2023, and as stated on their website, these modifications will cover a variety of key areas.

A new malicious package has been detected on the Node Package Manager (npm) repository that poses a significant threat to users who may unknowingly install it. Named ‘Vibranced,’ the package has been carefully crafted to mimic the popular ‘colors’ package, which has over 20 million weekly downloads.

Remote or hybrid work have become the de facto standard for many companies, post-pandemic, as more employees demand more flexible workplace policies. Therefore, organizations looking to support hybrid work will require a long-term strategy that ensures their infrastructure is equipped to securely facilitate this new flexible work environment.

In last week’s discussion around readiness and resilience, I introduced the concept of what it means to have “threat-informed” cybersecurity. This week, I want to show you what that looks like in the real world – how it should drive you to challenge more assumptions, reduce your attack surface, and game out real-world scenarios.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has outlined its third-party risk management requirements for United States national banks and federal savings associations in the OCC Bulletin 2013-29. These risk management standards don't only apply to third-party vendor relationships; the OCC expects all banks to follow best third-party risk management practices, whether activities occur internally or through service providers.

Vendor security ratings cannot be adjusted without modifying the criteria for evaluating a vendor’s security posture. Since the ability to make unmitigated adjustments violates the objectivity of security posture measurements, this functionality usually isn’t possible on security rating solutions. However, a workaround is to prevent certain discovered risks from influencing the calculation of a vendor’s security ratings.