SSH bastion hosts are an indispensable security enforcement stack for secure infrastructure access. Every security compliance standard that deals with remote infrastructure access (e.g., FedRAMP AC-17 - Remote Access, HIPAA §164.312(a)(1) - Access control, SOC2 CC6.1 - Manage Points of Access) mandates preventing direct network access to the servers and APIs.

It’s been a whirlwind year for Styra — from going fully remote as a company to raising $40 million in Series B Funding to more than doubling our workforce. We have a lot to be thankful for as a company, and before we say “goodbye” to 2021 and “hello'' to 2022, I wanted to take a moment to recap some of my favorite moments and initiatives of this past year.

Bots are rampant across the web – in fact, around 50% of all web traffic is automated or invalid, i.e., doesn’t come from a real user with genuine interest. While some of this traffic is good and useful, for example, search engine crawlers and content aggregators, a high percentage is malicious. Hosting bad bots on your server can result in a plethora of problems for your website and business, from damage to your brand reputation to excessive financial and technical costs.

Business security is often associated with larger companies where employees spend most of their time in front of computers. This stereotype can lead small business owners – especially ones outside the tech industry – to think they’ll never be targeted by hackers and don’t need to invest in security. It’s a mistake that cybercriminals are exploiting.

Malware targeting Linux-based operating systems, commonly deployed in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, have increased by 35% in 2021 compared to 2020, according to current CrowdStrike threat telemetry, with the top three malware families accounting for 22% of all Linux-based IoT malware in 2021.

Many of us are fond of collecting things, but not everyone is excited about Collections #1-5. In 2019, these Collections, composed of ca. 932 GB of data containing billions of email addresses and their passwords, made their way around the Internet. These collections weren’t breaches but compilations of emails and passwords that had been gathered. Even after repeat entries were whittled down, the collection still contained billions of distinct address and password combinations.

Traditionally, we start the new year with resolutions. We want to do more good things, like working, other things we try to eliminate. Considering the latter, my 2022 resolution is to stop accidentally exposing confidential information while I hack my application during demos on stage or similar. Yes, this new years resolution sounds very specific, and it has an excellent security horror story behind it…